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An Interview with Dan Streufert, IT Director, MedPlast
Medical Devices Company
- 5 locations in USA
- Over 200 molding presses
- 24/7 uptime
- Critical product data retention requirements
Business Challenges
- Existing backup targets were becoming full
- Existing backup windows were becoming longer and longer
- Costs were rising and not controlled
- A new strategy and longer term solution was required as opposed to more and more disk and more cost
Using StorSimple
- Initially Backup Target
- VMware Ready Storage including instant Snapshot, Cloud Snapshot with no adverse impact on performance or backup windows
- ERP and supporting applications such as database reporting and monitoring manufacturing presses
- File Shares and archives
Security, Performance and Rewriting Applications
- Security - Deduplication, compression and encryption.
- AES-256 encryption adequately met MedPlast’s requirements
- Performance – Good due to working-set management, BlockRankTM and auto-tiering
- Rewrite Applications – No changes due to iSCSI interface
Retired Systems and Scale of Storage
- Data Domain
- 10TB Data set plus backup and archives
- Pay for what you use
Virtualization and Cloud Providers
- vSphere version 4 clustered
- Amazon S3
Benefits of Using StorSimple
- Integrated storage – Primary, Snapshot, Cloud Snapshot
- “Set and Forget” – It just runs
- No Tape
Why StorSimple
- Enterprise-class product
- Enterprise-class company
- The most fully baked product
Lessons Learned
- Simplify Storage from SAN + Snapshot +Tape + Backup software to StorSimple
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MedPlast is a leading medical devices company with 5 locations across the USA. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, molding presses generate medical devices that are critical to people’s lives. The content behind these devices has strict retention policies, has to be stored for the lifetime of the product and be quickly available when required.
Why Enterprise Cloud Storage
MedPlast started evaluating the cloud and cloud storage when their existing backup targets were becoming full and backup windows were getting longer and longer. Instead of throwing more and more disk (and money) at the problem, Dan led an evaluation to fix the problem and provide a long-term solution.
Using StorSimple
MedPlast initially started using StorSimple as a backup target. What MedPlast quickly realized is that StorSimple is much more than just a backup target and if you only use it for backup, you miss out on many of the benefits. MedPlast quickly moved to storing their Virtual Machines (VM’s) on StorSimple which enabled them to perform instant Snapshots and Cloud Snapshots with no adverse effects on performance and the backup window.
The VM’s being managed include an ERP application with supporting applications such as database reporting and programs that monitor the molding presses. File shares and archiving are another key use case.
The Three Myths of Cloud Computing
MedPlast looked at security, performance and if applications needed to be rewritten to use the cloud. Before any data is written to the cloud, it is deduplicated, compressed and encoded with AES-256 encryption military grade encryption, which adequately met MedPlast’s security requirements.
The working-set management, BlockRankTM and automatic tiering across SSD, SAS drives and cloud storage delivered the performance that MedPlast required for their VMware deployment. MedPlast had previously used Fibre Channel (FC) and this was their first iSCSI deployment. StorSimple’s iSCSI support meant that VM’s ran out-of-the-box in a VMware Ready certified way.
Retired Systems and Scale of Storage
The Data Domain backup target was filling up and this was replaced with StorSimple. The data-set being managed at MedPlast is 10TB and growing with additional storage required for the archival and backup of this data set.
Virtualization and Cloud Providers
All applications are virtualized using vSphere version 4 in a clustered mode on HP hardware.
Previous Storage Providers
Prior to using StorSimple, MedPlast was leasing co-located Hitachi storage.
Benefits from Using StorSimple
StorSimple is a new way of thinking about storage. It gives you primary storage, Snapshots and Cloud Snapshots in one box. You can “set it and forget it” and it just runs on schedule. The great thing is you don't have to run to the datacenter for tape. Not using tape is a great thing.
Why Choose StorSimple
“We looked at all of the vendors in this space and I spent a lot of time analyzing the capabilities and the pros and cons of each one. I reached a conclusion that StorSimple had the most fully baked product of the various choices out there and they seemed to have the most enterprise class product and organization. When you are talking about primary storage and backup it is one of the most critical parts of your infrastructure and you need to really have confidence in that vendor. I spent a lot of time researching this. As soon as you open the box with the StorSimple device you can tell it’s a solid, purpose-built device. It’s not a rebranded PC with a name badge slapped on it. It’s very robust. Even from the first impressions of hardware you can tell its enterprise class.”
Key Lessons Learned
The primary lesson learned is that to get the most out of enterprise cloud storage you need to think of your data in a different way. Before you used to think about using a SAN, performing Snapshots, copying them to tape and using backup software to manage this whole process. There is a lot of complexity. StorSimple just simplifies this. You don’t have to worry about moving data around. Each block is automatically tiered based on use and automatically backed up offsite.
When you do full backups to tape 90% of the blocks are the same each time. You think “there has got to be a better way”. With VMware and StorSimple you get great deduplication ratios and don't resend the same blocks over and over again for backup. There is a better way.
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