Organization: Top 50 U.S. City
Industry: Local government
Location: Mid-west
Size: 3,000 city employees serving 400,000 residents
Needs:
- Ample data storage to accommodate the city’s growing data requirements
- Flexibility for future data growth
- Additional raw storage capacity
Solutions:
- Long-term solution that adapts to the city’s evolving needs
- Easy to use interface and appliance that is managed within minutes per day
- Enterprise solution that protects physical and virtual environments
- Multiple disaster recovery options
- Simple to use appliances and software with one point of contact for support questions
Products:
- IBM Powered STORServer Backup Appliances
“STORServer truly delivers on its promises, and the company’s expertise and appliances are complemented well by the newest features and capabilities of IBM Spectrum Protect. In fact, with all of the automation built in to the newest backup system, it’s made our job easier.” , – Senior systems analyst for the city.
“The combination of STORServer and IBM Spectrum Protect simply works and has met our requirements from day one. Some of my counterparts are on their third iteration of backup technology and are still trying to find a technology partner that meets their requirements. We consider ourselves very fortunate to have a backup system that meets all of our needs, even as those requirements have evolved from the start of our partnership 19 years ago.” mentioned, – System administrator for the city.
The city reduces data storage costs, increases speed of data backups with refreshed data backup system from STORServer and the newest features in IBM Spectrum Protect™
With a partnership spanning nearly two decades, the city has always been satisfied with STORServer’s built to order data backup appliances.
“The combination of STORServer and IBM Spectrum Protect simply works and has met our requirements from day one,” said the system administrator for the city. “Some of my counterparts are on their third iteration of backup technology and are still trying to find a technology partner that meets their requirements. We consider ourselves very fortunate to have a backup system that meets all of our needs, even as those requirements have evolved from the start of our partnership 17 years ago.”
Easy to use, with a simple interface and appliance that is managed in just minutes per day, STORServer is a trusted long-term solution for the city. Even as application and hardware requirements change, STORServer’s data backup appliances fit every environment.
After six years of continuous top-notch performance from its previous data backup system, the city decided to upgrade its current configuration in preparation for its evolving data backup needs and a necessary increase in raw storage capacity. Certain vendors, such as the mowing service used by the park department, store pictures of their completed work on the city’s server, which inflates the overall storage footprint the city backs up daily.
In addition, all of the city’s new projects are stored on virtualized servers, which increases its storage footprint and requires additional storage capacity. Under this new configuration, additional shelves of storage can easily be added to allow for future IT projects, such as mobile-based applications. Easily scalable as the city’s data grows, STORServer’s total appliance solution is simple to upgrade, install and begin backups on the first day.
The Solution
STORServer helped the city implement a new primary and secondary data backup system that serves them well today and will evolve with their needs over time.
An enterprise solution that protects both physical and virtual environments, STORServer combines a simplified approach with a powerful appliance solution that provides the city with everything they need now and the ability to adapt to their future requirements. A public cloud option is available with STORServer as well, should there be future plans to transition to the cloud.
While the city prefers tape for its disaster recovery copy, STORServer offers multiple disaster recovery options, including appliance-to-appliance replication and appliance-to-cloud options, Instant restore capability, and simplified customer support, with a single point of contact at STORServer, all make it easy to troubleshoot any issues and receive assistance as needed.
With easy software licensing capabilities, the appliance refresh also included upgrading to the newest version of IBM Spectrum Protect. This software offers valuable deduplication capabilities to reduce their storage footprint and progressive incremental forever backup technology that minimizes the network requirements and storage resource utilization.
Offering a simple way for the city to manage its data backup in just minutes per day, the STORServer Console (SSC)and STORServer Virtual Machine Backup (VMB) software were also included in this new configuration policy-based management also provides granular control at the file, folder or server level. Instant restore features for their virtual machines reduces end-user downtime impact to nearly zero.
The new primary and secondary backup system configurations are as follows:
- Primary Backup: STORServer A740 and IBM V3700 – Located in in the city center area site, the STORServer enterprise backup appliance enables the city to experience faster processing power and take advantage of IBM Spectrum Protect’s latest features, which includes deduplication capabilities to reduces the city’s backup storage requirements. The city’s primary backup data is kept on disk for quick restore and to take advantage of IBM Spectrum Protect’s deduplication feature, which reduces backup storage requirements.
This configuration also includes IBM Spectrum Protect Suite licensing, which offers simplified pricing and licensing with a tiered per-terabyte metric. This licensing enables the agency to have access to a suite of backup software products, including database and mail agents, along with IBM Spectrum Protect™ for Virtual Environments, which the city uses for its VMware® environment.
- Secondary Backup: STORServer Backup Appliance – The city’s secondary backup site, located at a facility 5.5 miles away from the primary downtown data center site, uses a STORServer backup appliance with internal storage. This location also has several protected critical servers that house data separately from the mid-town location. Spectrum Protect’s deduplication technology reduces the amount of disk storage required for their backup storage. For its disaster recovery copy, the city uses an IBM TS3100 tape library with LT07 drives, upgrading to 15TB compressed capacity. These tapes are sent offsite and could be accessed if needed in the event they are unable to restore data from the primary appliance.
The city benefits from the easy software licensing and simplified, streamlined support with just a single point of contact for customer service. Its new data backup implementation allowed the city to make the best use of IBM Spectrum Protect software features and move data more efficiently, allowing for best implementation of data protection business practices. In fact, the new appliances recently restored 10TB of data successfully.
Additional external storage can be added as needed to the appliance server and in the future, the city could elect to replicate data between both locations or even leverage the cloud for disaster recovery copy purposes. The secondary disaster recovery backup location provides peace of mind in case of an event that negatively affects the primary data center and storage appliances. Since the tape storage is in a separate location, that disaster recovery copy of the city’s data could be used to restore data and functionality.
The Results
- Achieving outstanding deduplication savings, which reduces storage requirements.
- Streamlined appliances and backup processes that allow for future data growth
- Increased data backup and storage efficiency
- Overall reduction of storage footprint, which results in cost savings
- Increased savings on storage licensing and reduced infrastructure costs with deduplication features
- Increased tape capacity of up to 15TB compress with LTO7 media
- Reduced daily processing time in half, from six hours to three hours
ABOUT STORSERVER
STORServer is a leading provider of data protection solutions and offers the only enterprise data backup appliance that is built to order. Each backup appliance solution is tailored to the customer’s unique environment to simplify management of complex backup, archive and disaster recovery needs. STORServer’s appliances feature enterprise-class data backup, archive and disaster recovery software, hardware, services and U.S.-based customer support. STORServer is proud to now offer SoftLayer® containers and DRaaS in SoftLayer virtual machines. Companies of all sizes trust in STORServer’s proven appliances to solve their most complex data protection problems. For more information on STORServer, please visit storserver.com.
storserver.com (800) 550-5121 Copyright 2017 STORServer, Inc.
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