To be honest, given CA's extensive résumé in enterprise management, we expected more detail and capability description in its response to the issue of how proper operation of the solution would be verified. Instead, it offered only that breakdowns would produce alerts.
Pricing was (mercifully) done for us: $467,000 plus $250,000 in implementation fees, for a total of $717,000. Although no third-party costs were specified, recommendations at various points in the document suggested that servers be dedicated to management-software deployment. These hardware costs, plus the costs for any "proxy" testing servers and for servers and storage devices at the remote site, could add up.
Computer Associates International, (800) 225-5224, (631) 342-6800. www.ca.com
Quantum's response came from its Storage Solutions Group and specified both hardware and software components. Quantum assumed many facts not in evidence about the environment at Darwin's, including pre-existing use of Veritas' NetBackup 4.5 to conduct backups over the LAN to existing tape libraries shown in the diagram (see our scenario, below). The vendor further stated that the NAS filers within the grocery chain's empire of storefronts were "Network Appliance 700- and 800-series filers," and assumed that additional filers were deployed within the headquarters data center because of the mention of NDMP over Gigabit Ethernet. Quantum also offered that the operating systems installed on Darwin's database servers were unspecified and recommended that the company deploy, if it had not done so already, Sun Solaris to support transaction-heavy workloads. Um, OK.
Having stated these assumptions, the folks at Quantum SSG proceeded to reinvent the infrastructure at Darwin's. They recommended consolidating storage platforms behind the Store Accounting Systems onto a single Hitachi Lightning 9900 array, and establishing a primordial Fibre Channel fabric by deploying a Brocade Communications Corp. Fibre Channel switch between the Lightning and its servers. Over time, they said, other storage platforms for the inventory and data-mining applications would also be weaved into the fabric. Ultimately, they claimed, this strategy would enable the replication of data over Fibre Channel rather than IP.
Quantum further suggested deploying a secondary site (a recovery center) with an interconnecting VPN to encrypt data in transit. Then, to solve the problem of replication, it recommended the same software set as Veritas, including the Cluster Server. According to Quantum, the clustering software would provide assurance that application servers at the remote location were tested and ready to receive load in the event of an outage, an observation Veritas never explicitly made.
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