Control Data handles installation for German maritime agency

BSH is the central maritime governmental agency in Germany and responsible for all questions and activities concerning naval affairs. It belongs to the Ministry of Traffic in Bonn. At locations in Hamburg and Rostock with about 950 employees they provide services for economic and secure shipment. Other key aspects are environmental protection and broadening of maritime knowledge. BSH has its own fleet.

The costs for the old workhorse, the CDC Cyber 960, and the file server as well for the data centre grew from 1990 to 1994 from more than 8 million DM (4 million ECU) to more than 10 million DM (5 million ECU), 4 million DM (2 million ECU) for maintenance. They saw the Cyber 960 as a dead end as CDC has stopped computer production the computer centre look for a new solution. BSH started a European-wide call for tender - as this is legally required by EC rules for a governmental agency. The requirements: operational 24 hours and 7 days a week, fast, redundant, with a good price-performance ratio and reduction of the high costs. Four areas had to be covered, processing the numerical models for tidal prediction, database applications, numerical simulation and IT management and administration. BSH defined a benchmark that contained the numerical model and some scientific applications. Another decision was migration from NOS-VE to UNIX.

Within this activity a restructuring of the computer centre as well as the application software was realised.

Control Data - now system integrator and supplier - offered the best and most innovative solution: in the first step a Cray CS 6400, an SMP system with SUN Sparc processors, the second step the Starfire, now known as SUN Ultra Enterprise 10000.

The first Cray CS6400 with four processors was delivered in the 4. quarter of 1994 and successively extended to 32 processors and 2 GByte shared memory, and 136 GBytes Raid 5 discs. The acquisition of the Cray business unit by SUN delayed the installation of the Starfire. This spring the first Sun E10000 was delivered. Currently the system utilises 24 processors and 6 GByte memory and 252 GByte raid 5 discs. The computer center also uses a SUN SparcCenter 1000 with 4 processors, 384 MByte memory and 27 GByte disc space. It is used as a recovery system.

The CS6400 and the E10000 can be configured depending on the requirements. Usually 16 processors are used for the regular tidal prediction. The results are available after 30 minutes compared to several hours on the CD Cyber 960. Based on these results, automatically a voice file is produced that can be accessed by telephone: +49 190 576 600 - if the reader wants to try it. Because of the bigger memory and the higher speed, a more accurate prediction is possible. Thus ship-owners can plan the entering of their ships in the Elbe river optimally. They commented on the better prediction: it saves them money. If a storm is expected with heavy tidal waves, the whole system can be used for this task.

As the central computers are connected by 622 Mbit/s and the user network with 155 Mbit/s ATM, it is possible to archive the data from the users PCs and workstations. The Veritas Netbackup software is used for the medium time storage in a hierarchical concept on an ATL DLT Jukebox and a central StorageTek silo. BSH uses the hierarchical storage management system SAM-FS that replaces UNITREE on the CD4860. SAM-FS has transfer rates that are only limited by the speed of the tape drives.

Christoph Brockmann, head of the computer center, commented on the results: "Within three years the team and the partners realised the migration from CDC's operating system NOS-VE to UNIX. We reduced the operational costs of the computer centre down to 6 million DM (3 million ECU), two million of it for maintenance. Computing power has been improved by a factor of 10. The introduction of the help-desk reduced the neighbourhood help to 5 million DM (2.5 million ECU) compared to median level of 8 million DM (4 million ECU), as there are about 800 PCs and 100 workstations at BSH. The economical pressure made the computer center fit for the future and much more flexible."

A new trend is now observable, the first workstations in the departments are replaced by cheaper PCs, as the centre can fulfill the users' requirements in computing power and competent advisory services.