Bogotá Aqueduct and Sewer Company

Public Services Company Increases Data Storage Capacity with Ground-Breaking Sun Storage Virtualization System

Bogotá Aqueduct and Sewer Company, known in Columbia as Empresa de Acueducto y Alcantarillado de Bogotá (EAAB), provides water and sewer services to the large number of businesses and residents within the Columbian capital and its neighboring towns. The public services company has the monumental task of maintaining more than 200 miles of water aqueducts and more than 4,000 miles of sewer mains, in addition to a water purification treatment plant and 44 pumping stations.

Customer Challenges

Generate more storage capacity for growing stream of data
Guarantee high availability of data in a more secure manner
Manage files easier
Reduce transaction back-up time
Respond more quickly to billing, payroll, and customer service demands

Solution

The company opted for a breakthrough solution to virtualize its data files and increase data storage capacity with a combination of Sun Fire mid-range and high-end UltraSPARC III servers and the Sun StorageTek 9985 storage virtualization system.

Business Results

Increased storage capacity
Achieved higher availability
Simplified file management
Reduced data backup time from 9 to 7.5 hours
Responded to user demands faster

Products and Services

Story Details

In 2005, EAAB had more than one-and-a-half million clients who relied on the company to provide water and sewer services for inhabitants in and around Bogatá. The company had no problem keeping water and sewage flowing through miles of aqueducts, sewers and canals, but piping data to its staff for critical business processes was proving to be a challenge.

The company was relying on a robust Sun architecture comprised of 40 servers to support its SAP applications, geographic information systems, Web site, and numerous third-party departmental systems. Backed by the Solaris Operating System, this platform provided support to more than 1,000 users accessing the company's business information systems for logistical, service distribution, billing, and collections processes. By 2005, increasing business had driven storage demand from 100GB to 120GB per month, and the system's capacity had reached critical mass. Due to the magnitude of the company's operations and the growing stream of administration, EAAB wanted to increase storage capacity and guarantee high availability of data in a swift and secure manner.

" One of the great advantages of the storage virtualization project was that we did not need to find time windows to add the new storage or migrate the data, which would have affected productivity. It also meant that our IT users did not have to put up with system unavailability "

— José Fernando Galvis Panqueva, IT Services Manager, EAAB

Sun's Professional Services team designed and implemented a solution using both Sun Fire mid-range and high-end UltraSPARC III servers and a storage architecture based on the Sun StorageTek 9985.

The result — a storage virtualization solution that was the first of its kind in Colombia. The whole process, from design to implementation was completed in less than two years and was transparent, allowing the company to continue operating without loss of productivity.

By creating virtual storage space, EAAB was able to increase storage capacity, accelerate data processing, simplify file management, and reduce transaction back-up time. The solution augmented the company's ability to provide the critical data functionality needed for billing, payroll, and customer service to ensure business continuity and customer satisfaction.