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BROOMFIELD, Colo, October 28, 2003. McDATA Corporation announced the competitive award and installation of McDATA Director and Fabric switches to support the Pentagon Renovation Program (PENREN). In addition to implementing the PENREN solution, storage network subcontractor NetCentrics is using McDATA's internetworking technology and SANavigator software for increased distance connectivity and centralized storage network management in additional projects at the Pentagon.
To date, the McDATA-based SANs total over 4,500 ports and support multiple agencies including the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the four armed services at the Pentagon.
"Providing for the common defense of our citizenry entails the creation, analysis and dissemination of highly sensitive and important data," said Michael Sullivan, PENREN program manager. "Upgrading our IT infrastructure has been a critical element to meeting this need. And continuous access to data is a linchpin to empowering the men and women at the Pentagon to complete their missions. Deploying a high-availability SAN using best-of-class devices along with the mirroring of data at a remote site ensures the survivability of our data."
The U.S. Army alone experienced data growth of 200 percent per year over the last two years. Scalability was unacceptably slow, often requiring the time-consuming procurement and installation of additional server-attached disk to support the growing environment. A byproduct of the DAS infrastructure was the existence of data islands, which made collaboration on projects more difficult. Furthermore, backing up data was inefficient, requiring substantial administrative labor hours to complete. With discrete storage, establishing and maintaining agency-wide backup and data management policies was extremely difficult.
The continuing PENREN-directed SAN implementations, which began in the late 1990s as part of a modernization initiative to solve these challenges, were accelerated following Sept. 11, 2001.
NetCentrics was hired to manage the Army's largest data center located at the Pentagon. NetCentrics, along with McDATA professional services, designed and implemented the SAN to meet scalability and availability needs.
"In order to meet our service level agreements, we have to maintain a very high level of availability for the Army's SAN," said Bob Dixon, NetCentrics Corp. senior architect for engineering services. "Our nation's defense literally depends upon their employees' ability to access, process and communicate data. The McDATA Intrepid Directors are a key element to making this happen. We haven't had a single outage since they've been deployed."
"Federal government customers have some of the world's highest levels of access and security requirements for data," said Mike Gustafson, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, McDATA. "McDATA's multi-capable storage networking solutions are regularly chosen to ensure the integrity of critical information. We are extremely pleased with the successes achieved in the case of the Pentagon, and McDATA is proud to be a part of this project."
The Pentagon Renovation Program (PENREN) is charged with transforming the 60-year old headquarters of the United States military into a modern, flexible and efficient work environment. The project requires the phased relocation of 25,000 Pentagon tenants, removing thousands of tons of hazardous materials, modernizing the utility and IT infrastructure and improving force protection and energy efficiency.
Fir more information, visit renovation.pentagon.mil .
For more information on McDATA, visit www.mcdata.com
Military & Aerospace Electronics
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