Compliance Newsflashes: Philadelphia Stock Exchange Saves Big Money Using Storage Area Network, and more
The Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) is reporting a 75 percent decrease in data storage expense as a result of its use of a storage area network (SAN). The SAN, provided by Brocade Communications Systems, raises the effectiveness with which the exchange archives its increasing records of trades and issues that are mandated by SEC regulation to be stored for seven years. The storage network also expedites the process of data backup while cutting administrative and storage management costs.
The SAN stores data flowing from PHLX's trading floor and electronic systems during the day, and backs up the information at night. This significantly reduces the manual effort for storage compliance.
"If we used conventional direct-attach storage systems, warehousing this much information would be too laborious and unproductive. Moreover, thanks to our SAN, we no longer back up data over the production network, which had in the past diminished bandwidth and slowed delivery of our business applications and resources," said Richard Ward, director of technical services at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, in a release.
The Brocade SAN allows PHLX administrators to consolidate tape and disk systems in a single storage pool, centralizing and simplifying their management. The SAN also optimizes the use of storage platforms within the infrastructure, ensuring systems are never under-used, and reducing the need for additional platforms.
With PHLX anticipating it storage needs to grow to 4 terabytes by the end of the year, it is imperative that the Brocade SAN has not only reduced per-gigabyte costs, but it has also allowed the exchange to reduce it's data storage and back-up staff from three full-time IT professionals to one part-time employee.
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