SP realized automated and compliance-consistent long-term archiving at BMW Group
To reduce their storage costs, BMW Group employs the CHRONOS solution from CSP GmbH & Co. KG. CHRONOS archives the data of an Oracle database at BMW thereby facilitating the secure filing of data from the production department that must be kept available during the runtime of a vehicle model of approximately eight years. The high amount of data generated in the production area had led to an enormous growth of the database before an archiving solution was introduced. This had led to a drastic cost increase and also, the performance of the database was more and more affected. With CHRONOS, BWM Group archives its data at monthly intervals.
Simply taking a look at CHRONOS Archiving of process data in the plant division of BWM Group shows how the implementation of the solution already pays off with a low data volume. Approximately 3.75 million data records are stored here per month which corresponds to a volume of roughly 125 MB in the archive. Roughly 20 gigabytes of storage volume is saved each year in the database. 65 gigabytes have already been saved since utilising the archiving solution. A conservative cost consideration of a few Euro per month per gigabyte and allowing for additional storage space reduction in the index and backup area show that enormous savings can be achieved here. CHRONOS integrated very well into the existing infrastructure of the car manufacturer and as a result, no technical and only a few organisational adjustments were necessary. Access to the archived data by the staff is quickly and easily possible at any time. This access is especially facilitated by an integrated search function.
Thanks to the simple and unsophisticated archiving tool for large data volumes BMW is independent of current and future database versions and also from applications. When the solution was implemented, Oracle version 8 was first used; upgrading to the Oracle 10 database is planned for the future. CHRONOS automatically takes this lifecycle into account and presents the data uniformly in each case when displaying it to the staff member. Another plus of the solution and, at the same time, significant expectation of BMW on the product, is the uncomplicated data access: If required, archived data is optionally made available via re-import into the productive system or by email delivery of search results directly from the archive.
The producer, CSP GmbH & Co. KG from Großköllnbach, supports BMW Group with professional user support for CHRONOS as well as individual adjustments to the databases. Of course, CHRONOS meets the compliance requirements on such a solution for long-term archiving and can be integrated into any existing application. With CHRONOS, a comprehensive Information Lifecycle Management is supported, while storage and performance problems are solved at the same time. Beyond this, the software from CSP stands out by its quick amortisation even in environments with low data volumes. As Java-based solution, it is available for many operating systems, amongst others, for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as well as Linux, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX and HP-UX. CHRONOS features a graphic user interface. It supports the configuration and monitoring of the archiving processes. Administration is separated from the actual user interface allowing it to be handled by a dedicated, specifically trained group of staff members.
“The installation at BMW Group is a typical employment example for our database archiving solution CHRONOS”, comments CHRONOS project manager, Korbinian Hermann. “Relieving databases, increasing performance while lowering costs – these are key issues for companies of any size. In many companies, the storage demand grows to at least three times the original utilised size through common saving mechanisms for database, backup and indices for quick access actions. Utilizing CHRONOS therefore pays off within a very short time.”
