Intelligent Storage Performance and Capacity Management at DATEV eG

DATEV eG, one of the largest software houses and IT service providers in Europe serving tax consultants, auditors, lawyers and their mainly medium-sized clients, relies on IntelliMagic Vision for performance analysis and capacity planning for disk storage and virtual tape systems. 

The data center of DATEV includes four IBM mainframe systems with a total capacity of more than 52,000 MIPS. The data from more than 40,000 clients amounts to almost 3 PB on disk storage systems and a virtual tape library in the z/OS environment.

“At DATEV, IntelliMagic Vision forms the basis for intelligent and efficient storage and performance management processes“, states Walter Auerochs, Senior Consultant z/OS & Storage at DATEV eG.

“IntelliMagic Vision allows us to proactively monitor and document our compliance with critical Service Level Agreements.”

In the z Systems area, IBM increasingly enhances the synergies between the operating system and the storage systems. “DATEV recognizes the magic triangle formed by the storage system and its cornerstones of functionality, performance, and cost here”, emphasizes Mr. Auerochs, while pointing out that, “the storage market is currently moving away from ‘rotating spindles’ towards flash-based storage systems. It is important to always provide the appropriate infrastructure for the applications. IntelliMagic Vision provides us with the necessary insights to perform this complex task.”

“At DATEV, we have specific requirements in the z/OS environment for the response times of online transactions. For nightly batch jobs, however, the overall throughput capability must be sufficient for backups and reorganisations,” determines Walter Auerochs.

“In the past, RMF and self-written programs were used to perform deep analyses of the z/OS resources at DATEV. These analyses proved to be extremely time-consuming and required in-depth expertise”, explains Mr. Auerochs, describing the previous limitations: “We always managed to analyze only a few important days. Then we had to represent the mountain of undigested data clearly in graphical form, as best as we could.”

“Now, with IntelliMagic Vision, we can prepare our analyses on-the-fly in both tabular and graphical form at the press of a button. Comparing analyses with other time periods is made very  simple, the quality of the analyses has increased considerably, and support is also provided for planning processes.” Experts are relieved from doing manual tasks and are more able to perform strategic planning. “Storage administrators can now also independently create standard analyses and can relocate volumes in a targeted manner,” notes Mr. Auerochs.

To plan major changes, such as the replacement or purchase of additional capacity, DATEV experts analyze the actual status in detail and create plans based on this. Once the changes have been implemented, a further detailed analysis is performed with a planned/actual comparison.

“The support we receive from IntelliMagic has been very convincing,” stresses Mr. Auerochs. “Instead of nameless help desk support, IntelliMagic provides fast and qualified help by experts, confirming our feeling of being in a long-term partnership. Particularly noteworthy is also the high-quality continuous enhancement of the solution, which is made available to the customers within the scope of maintenance.”

Walter Auerochs: “In summary, we can state that IntelliMagic Vision has become the pivot point of DATEV capacity planning and performance management for DATEV z/OS storage systems.”

About DATEV eG

DATEV eG is a software developer and IT service provider for tax consultants, auditors, and attorneys, as well as their mostly medium-sized clients. DATEV is one of Europe’s largest information service providers and software development companies.

More Customer Experiences

• You can download a PDF of this customer experience in English here. This testimony was originally created in German, so you can also download a PDF of the German version.
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