Blue Gecko
Service Provider to Manage Storage More Easily with StoreVault S500
Customer Overview
Blue Gecko is a managed service provider based in the Pacific Northwest offering remote or hosted database administration and remote systems administration. The company specializes in bringing the power and functionality of Oracle database services and Oracle® E-Business Suite to small and medium-sized businesses that otherwise would be unable to afford that class of business software.
Customer Challenges
The Oracle databases primarily run on Linux® with a few Windows® servers running SQL. Blue Gecko currently has around a terabyte of storage under management, distributed among the roughly 100 servers running databases up to 250GB in size. Because this storage is directly attached, it is time consuming to manage and difficult to add storage to the servers. Data is backed up over a dedicated subnet using CommVault Galaxy Express Backup and Recovery.
Blue Gecko had been looking at a number of networked storage solutions. The company had even considered migrating to a Fibre Channel SAN, but the costs would have been just too high. Principal Chuck Edwards and some of his team had first-hand experience with NetApp enterprise-class storage at other companies, prior to joining Blue Gecko. "We knew the capabilities of Data ONTAP®, so combining that with a lower price point made it very attractive and reachable for us."
So with the arrival of the StoreVault S500, ³We started to explore its capabilities and have been very happy with the performance. Our Oracle databases are not hugeour customers are SMBs and the combination of Oracle, NFS, and NetApp is well proven in the industry."
Customer Experience
The installation of the StoreVault S500 was easy and fast; the system was quickly sharing data. As storage is consolidated onto the S500, Blue Gecko expects to see a reduction in network traffic due to backups. "The price point, flexibility, and feature set meet most of the customer needs for reliable storage," said Edwards. In addition, the StoreVault¹s support for the NDMP protocol allowed Blue Gecko to add a layer of tape backup protection to their customer data with no service interruption or new hardware investment.
Customer Benefits
- Flexibility to add and allocate storage on the fly
- Reliability of RAID-DP™ combined with a global hot spare
- Seamless integration into existing backup infrastructure
- Security of enterprise-hardened operating system
For the future, Edwards says that the options are opening up as they discover more of the StoreVault capabilities. "Blade servers make a lot more sense and the flexibility supports the general trend towards virtual hosting."
The ability to make Snapshot copies of an entire server is a boon for data protection at a much more granular level than backups.
As Edwards says, "From a cost perspective, the StoreVault product just makes sense, but it also has great data protection features and is flexible and easy to use."
Blue Gecko, Inc.
206 First Avenue South
Suite 230
Seattle, WA 98104
www.bluegecko.net
