Lufthansa Systems had already been using the virtual tape solution in its central midrange back-up environment since the end of 2006, after the system proved very successful in the dedicated data back-up environment of a company in the financial sector. Lufthansa Systems' current decision in favor of CentricStor was made to optimize data back-up for further customers.

Lufthansa Systems offers customized solutions not only to the airline and aviation industry, but also to the fields of industry, logistics, media and publishing companies and financial services. The product portfolio ranges from IT consulting to the development of individual applications and includes reliable round-the-clock operation, as well. In this case, the Infrastructure Services division at Lufthansa Systems manages and maintains the customer systems in its own data centers in Germany as well as in the USA and in Asia.

Two CentricStor systems have already been in use in the data centre in Kelsterbach since 2005, providing highly available back-up of business-critical customer data from the financial sector. The customer data back-up was automated and migrated in keeping with Lufthansa Systems Infratec's high standards. In addition, the corresponding back-up infrastructure was consolidated and brought up to date.

This positive experience convinced the employees in charge to use the system for their central data back-up as well, particularly because this was the only solution able to offer the disk-to-disk-to-tape back-up concept required. This process works by using virtual drives to store all the data in a disk-based cache before they are recorded on a physical tape medium in an automated, rule-based writing process. This makes it possible for Lufthansa Systems to automate the data back-up of its open-system environment and save considerable costs at the same time. Thanks to CentricStor, fewer tape drives are required, and the further automation of the data back-up process also results in lower costs. At the same time, the new system used by Lufthansa Systems will ensure that all of the important data stored will be accessible more quickly than ever. The previous system used for data back-up was no longer able to fulfill this requirement to the company's satisfaction.

In the first step of the project scheduled up until 2010, a CentricStor VTA5000 with more than 380 virtual drives will, in conjunction with Veritas NetBackup software, provide for efficient data back-up on several different tape systems. The system is specifically designed for high availability and distributed over two separate fire areas in the data centre. Should one area ever fail, CentricStor can use fail-over mechanisms in the second area to guarantee smooth-running data back-up and restore. The CentricStor "dual-save" function is also able to make copies of the back-up data at both locations, if necessary, making it possible to serve different service levels.