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Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, a leading company in the Indian
insurance domain is a JV between two leading conglomerates-Allianz AG, one of
the world's largest insurance companies, and Bajaj Auto, one of the biggest 2-
and 3-wheeler manufacturers in the world. Bajaj Allianz is one of the fastest
growing private life insurance companies in India with a customer base of over
400,000, supported by customer care centers in 155 cities and supplemented by
35,000 insurance consultants.
In an industry where efficient information access plays a
crucial role, Bajaj Allianz is under constant pressure to provide its users with
a robust computing environment. With a requirement of over 1,000 concurrent
users, efficient storage and data retrieval was the key. Lowering the overall
infrastructure cost and ensuring sustained investment protection-while
simultaneously energizing performance and optimal storage management-were some
of the challenges that Bajaj Allianz was grappling with.
"Our earlier storage environment was inadequate. For
instance, when more than 100 users accessed the database, performance
exponentially deteriorated. Thus, time and accessibility parameters became
contentious issues. Furthermore, the inflexible storage box design of the
database server meant that accessibility problems got compounded during year end
and other peak periods, leading to major I/O problems," says JB Bhaskar,
head of IT, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance.
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| At
a Glance |
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Challenges
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Need to enhance performance and enable higher throughput for data transfer
(I/O) between the server and storage
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Need to lower storage administration cost and increase performance and
availability
Solution
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PA-8800 RISC technology based HP rp4440 and rp3440 servers; HP
StorageWorks EVA 3000 SAN
Benefits
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Improved I/O performance
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Low pressure on resources thereby lower administration costs
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99% uptime-unparalleled business continuity |
It was performance issues like these that prompted Bajaj Allianz
to scout for a storage solution that could mitigate storage and access risks
efficiently, without compromising on cost and performance parameters. After
several rounds of intense discussions, the company zeroed in on the HP 9000
servers, based on PA 8800 RISC processors, and the HP StorageWorks EVA 3000 SAN
for the primary site, with no single point failure configuration.
With a high level of redundancy at the hardware and at the OS
levels, the storage solution at Bajaj Allianz moved from a static and reactive
state to a proactive, dynamic and intelligent state. The transition from the
previous environment was seamless, and was completed in 15 days. Bajaj Allianz
was the first enterprise in India to go in for PA-RISC 8800 technology.
HP's StorageWorks EVA 3000 SAN addressed the I/O problems
through its technology of virtualization. Database accessibility concerns have
dropped substantially for Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance. The company now has the
required scalability and storage virtualization to ensure the smooth running of
critical business operations. The storage solution has ensured that the data
required for processing is accessed quickly and delivered swiftly to
applications. More importantly, the solution addresses Bajaj Allianz's unique
needs and removes the cost constraints and the manageability and scalability
issues associated with traditional storage solutions.
Performance related issues, particularly with the throughput for
data transfer (I/O) between the server and storage, have been eliminated. Not
only did the storage solution enable Bajaj Allianz to scale up their storage
four times at a cost that was competitive, it also allowed the seamless
management of the SAN configuration, thereby lowering administration costs and
freeing up resources.
Rajneesh De
rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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