Computerworld - As the Mohegan Sun Casino readies itself for the final test of a new $60 million IT infrastructure that it installed in stages during the past 18 months, the gaming resort isn't in a gambling mood.
Central to the infrastructure upgrade is a $4 million network that's aimed at more closely monitoring the casino's slot machines and a new customer relationship management (CRM) system, said Jake Star, director of technology services at the Uncasville, Conn.-based company.
With a new 1,200-room hotel and convention center due to open later this month, Star said he expects the 26MB of daily statistical data that currently wends its way through the network to double in size.
"After the slot machines, the monitoring system is probably the most important thing we've got in here," he said.
Star emphasized that every facet of the 5 million-square-foot entertainment complex, which includes a 10,000-seat arena, a shopping mall and the soon-to-be-added facilities, relies on the seamless performance of Mohegan Sun's network. He added that the stakes are too high for the IT staff to trust that the casino's network and applications will perform as advertised, creating the need to monitor everything. "Without it, we're doing this blind," Star said.
Playing a Big Hand
As part of its IT overhaul, Mohegan Sun also installed the following technologies:
Five IBM AS/400 systems to replace the 13 IBM RS/6000 Unix servers that formerly ran its back-office operations
Two T3 trunk lines to replace its existing T1 connections
A Cisco Catalyst 6509 core, distribution and server switching network plugged into 1,100 Cisco Catalyst 4006 closet switches
Gigabit Ethernet to every server, with a minimum connection of 100M bit/sec. to every desktop, 2G bit/sec. to each wiring closet and 8G bit/sec. to 8G bit/sec. to each core switch system
Separate virtual LANs that isolate a new hotel and convention center to protect core systems
6,150 networked slot machines feeding into an integrated slot machine/CRM system running on the AS/400s
Prior to the upgrade, Star had to contend with a network outage of at least one hour every two weeks. Since then, the casino hasn't suffered any core outages, and only one server switch has been down for a total of 45 seconds, he said.
"If you can't talk to our AS/400s, you're talking, just in net profits, about losing $1 million a day," Star said. "We have to ensure uptime and fix things quickly if there's an outage."
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