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Non-profit foundation
- World renowned for its conservation of the oceans
- 1.8m visitors per year
- 450 staff and 1200 volunteers
Business Challenges
- Need for a new SAN for file server data
- Need to increase the amount of data that can be backed up in a specific time window
- Cost of whole storage lifecycle across primary, archival, backup and disaster recovery
Using StorSimple
- One box for Primary, Archival, Backup and DR of all data
- File Shares data
- Replace Tape
Retired Systems and Scale of Storage
- 10 TB file shares
- Replaced 3 SAN devices with StorSimple appliance
- Eliminated Tape
Benefits of Using StorSimple
- Tripled storage capacity at the same cost
- One simple to manage appliance vs. three – storage, deduplication and DR
- Reduced tape management labor time by one hour per day
- Increased amount of data that can be backed up in a specific time period
Security, Performance and Rewriting applications
- AES-256 encryption adequately met security requirements
- No Rewrite of applications – due to iSCSI interface
Why StorSimple
- One simple to manage appliance vs. three different solutions
- Dramatic cost savings
Lessons Learned
- Security, performance and application rewriting challenges are nonexistent with the StorSimple + Azure solution.
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Background
The foundation is a non-profit organization with a limited budget so addressing storage needs and implementing deduplication or disaster recovery seemed like insurmountable challenges.
Experience with StorSimple
After seeing the demonstration of StorSimple at the Microsoft Technology Center in Mountain View the customer realized that they could accomplish all of these with a single StorSimple devices and triple their storage capacity at the same cost
They've also been successful in reducing the need for tapes, cut labor by five hours per week, reduced backup times by several hours and have a easy to test a disaster recovery solution. Additionally, data recovery from off-site backups that took two days now happens in a few minutes.
Security, Performance and Cloud Compatibility Concerns Addressed
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“These myths or problems are non-existent. The security is there with AES-256 encryption, the performance is certainly above average and we didn't have to rewrite any of our applications. We are already seeing reduced costs after just going live.”
- Director of Information Services |
Initial Deployment Size and Systems Retired
The foundation currently stores 10TB of data which is expected to grow over time. With this StorSimple deployment, the customer has retired 3 legacy Fibre Channel (FC) SAN storage systems and eliminated tape.
One of the drivers of the project was that there are only so many hours in the day and with tape the foundation could only backup 7.5TB per night. With StorSimple all 10TB of data is backed up on a daily basis and provides the Recovery Point Objectives and Recovery Time Objectives the foundation needs.
Cloud Storage Provider
The foundation is using Windows Azure.
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“Azure has been a great choice for the foundation. We met some of the Microsoft Azure folks and learned what Azure can do for us. I realized that there were other options out there, but Microsoft Azure was the most logical choice for us.”
- Director of Information Services |
Reasons for Choosing StorSimple
The director looked at the options of buying a standard SAN, a deduplication device and a backup device for business continuity and Disaster Recovery.
The option of buying one integrated appliance vs. three separate devices with different management consoles and interfaces was compelling.
Recommendation to Other Customers
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“Ask yourself the direct question, Do you have the resources to maintain all of your servers, applications and data on premises? If you can't say "Yes", much like the answer I gave myself then you need to leverage the cloud. It's available now, the price is right and it provides instant ROI."
- Director of Information Services |
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