Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Scottrade's new data center: Redundant everything

Online trading firm moves up to new IT quarters to avoid downtime

June 19, 2007 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - REJIS isn't the only St. Louis-based organization that has relocated its IT operations to a new data center this spring. Online trading company Scottrade Inc. recently completed a move of its own to a new $25 million IT facility.

The new data center, located in a St. Louis suburb, is the largest technology investment that Scottrade has made since it was founded in 1980, according to CIO Ian Patterson.

"This wasn't as much a move as it was a revamping of the technology," Patterson said. "We actually redesigned the entire network core and all the infrastructure on the trading floor. It was a greenfield approach."

The 34,000-square-foot data center boasts a 10 Gigabit Ethernet backbone, versus Gigabit Ethernet in the old facility, and the PowerEdge blade servers that support Scottrade's trading floor have been upgraded to Dell Inc.'s so-called 9th Generation models. The raised-floor portion of the facility comprises about 11,000 square feet, large enough to hold about 100 people in addition to all the systems, Patterson said.

The data center includes exterior security cameras that prescreen visitors, while internal security measures include the use of card keys, motion-activated surveillance cameras and biometric palm scanners.

The facility also features fully redundant electrical and cooling systems. Two liquid chillers do the cooling, with a third that can be added if the raised-floor portion of the data center ever needs to be expanded, Patterson said. Dual-power feeds are connected to each server rack, and some have quadruple electricity hookups. In addition, each of Scottrade's two backup generators can support the entire data center if the other goes down.

Because of the situation with the electrical grid in St. Louis, Scottrade wasn't able to tap into multiple power suppliers -- a common strategy in some data centers. "That's why we went with dual generators and a battery backup system," Patterson explained. "Our battery system is rated for seven minutes but in testing [ran] for 10. And our generators take about one-and-a-half minutes to power up, so we're covered."

Another improvement is the addition of a loading dock that includes a large storage area, plus an equipment burn-in room directly between the dock and the data center. "In the old facility, we didn't have enough dock space to get new products in, so we made sure to improve that flow," Patterson said.

The new data center is located about 8 miles away from the old one, so personnel issues weren't an issue in the move. Patterson said that the upgraded facility was needed to avoid trading downtime and latency, and that it should be able to handle Scottrade's processing requirements for the next five years.



Jump to comments

Scottrade

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER
Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.
WHITE PAPER
Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.
WHITE PAPER
Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.

What People Are Saying

White Papers & Webcasts

Opportunities and Challenges with the Convergence of Data Center Networks
Computerworld and Juniper invite you to download this white paper.  

Effectively Implementing Datacenter Automation
Effectively select and deploy the best datacenter automation solution today!

Data Center Survival Guide
Computerworld and Juniper invite you download this white paper today!  

Mitigate Risk, Lower Costs and Improve Network Efficiency
Create a stable IP network that not only meets today's challenges, but is flexible enough to also meet future demands.

Optimize Performance of Datacenter to Datacenter Traffic
To get the backups and database synchronizations completed on time, enterprises rely on WAN optimization from Blue Coat.  

Data Protection is not an insurance policy -you cannot buy-back lost data
Find out why you need to maintain access to critical information to run your business and remain competitive.

2 Minutes to IT workload automation
Download this Complimentary Video! Sponsored by BMC Software.

Intelligent Tiered Storage: BlueArc's Implementation
This ESG White Paper discusses the importance of tiered storage, examines BlueArc's approach to intelligent tiering, and shows how it creates operational value...  

Three IT Strategies to Cut Cost Intelligently
Register for this Webcast! Provided by BMC Software.

 


Enterprise Data Center Network Reference Architecture
Simply designing a data center that only deploys more servers, storage and devices significantly increases network complexity and cost. The data center network also must offer components such as security, performance acceleration, high density and a resilient network infrastructure. This document shares Juniper Networks best practices in designing a highly efficient, secure, scalable and flexible data center network.

View this webcast 
Advancing the Economics of Networking
Aging network systems and old habits have dictated how businesses spend their IT budgets. As a result, a large percentage of IT dollars are being spent to “stay in the race.” While this model keeps revenue streams flowing for legacy network vendors, it doesn’t necessarily help businesses gain a competitive advantage. Juniper is changing this economic model by delivering a new family of solutions that reduce capital and operational expenses. By freeing up IT budget dollars, Juniper allows businesses to invest in other innovative technologies that will further reduce the cost of doing business while improving their competitive position.

Download this white paper 
Implementing HA at the Enterprise Data Center Edge to Connect to a Large Number of Branch Offices
This paper reviews the problem of creating a network where the dynamic availability of services is of critical importance. It explains how to deploy a highly available, working cluster by taking the design considerations in this paper and applying them to an actual deployment. The subsequent sections include configuration bits, diagrams and detailed discussions of how to accomplish a High Availability (HA) data center deployment.
Download this white paper