Business issues
The State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM) established NGCC in December 1995. The center has grown and developed over the years and is becoming the "Major Channel" through which SBSM provides geographical information to the general public. It also acts as the "Main Node" for SBSM's national network. NGCC undertakes the design, construction, maintenance and update of major government geographical projects such as "National Space Data Implementation" (NSDI) and develops applications for GPS, GIS and RS.

Since its establishment, NGCC has produced large amounts of data as a result of its research. Data backup is increasingly important and automatic backup of this immense repository has become an urgent issue.

Solutions
According to NGCC's requirements, StorageTek recommended a LANFree SAN backup solution, to ensure system performance and data security, and to relieve the LAN of heavy traffic. Data from servers will be backed up in the LANFree SAN environment, whereas only client terminals can use LAN for backup. StorageTek's solution includes an L700 tape library supporting mixed media from T9840 and DLT7000 tape drives, 9176 disk array, and VERITAS NetBackup software. The solution also supports heterogeneous environments of both Sun Solaris and NT, fully satisfying NGCC's requirements.

Business benefits
System operation results show that StorageTek's LANFree backup solution has solved NGCC's key backup issues. It has satisfied their needs for high-performance backup and provided a scalable architecture to accommodate future growth.