Lift-All
StoreVault provides Lift-All with cost effective disaster recovery solution
Customer Overview
Lift-All designs and manufactures material handling equipment; specializing in overhead lifting and cargo control. Lift-All is the largest sling manufacturer in North America and has been involved in many unusual and exciting projects. For example - their equipment was instrumental in lifting the H.L. Hunley (a Confederate submarine) and was also part of the filming of The Adventures of Lois and Clark where it helped a young Superman stop a rolling bus.
Customer Challenges
Lift-all has 300 employees and around 100 computers for various office personnel. There are a total of 6 servers including 4 Windows servers (Exchange - Dell 6450, File/Print - Dell 6450, Call Center - Dell 1850, Communications - Dell 2850) and 1 UNIX (IBM RS6000 - ERP) server in the Pennsylvania headquarters.
Before the StoreVault was deployed, Windows and UNIX servers hosted 125 GB data as direct attached storage. Growing business led to consistent data growth - around 50% annually. This growth resulted in larger customer database (a proprietary ERP system) and an increase in email, personal files and voice mail storage. Naturally, DAS was straining at the seams and was at 75-80% utilization.
A Windows backup server, loaded with CA BrightStore Arcserve, took full tape backups every night using quantum LTO-3 tape drives. Backups were later moved offsite as primary copies. These backups required accessing each server individually, leading to large management overheads. Additionally, the UNIX ERP server had its own home-grown backup mechanism using a LTO-3 tape drive - necessitating maintenance of 2 backup jobs and 2 sets of tapes. Another challenge with the current backup mechanism was the need to restore the entire exchange server for a single mailbox item restore. For disaster recovery, a Windows backup server in Chicago took disk to disk backup of all Windows data.
Lift-All’s IT infrastructure was continuously growing, needing a disaster recovery site, VoIP solution, integrated EDI for UNIX-based ERP system, and email/data retention plans for e-Discovery purposes. This would translate into additional physical servers per application, with disjointed storage volumes across multiple platforms. Additionally, each of the 4 branch locations maintained a file/print server on an XP Pro workstation creating a distributed storage environment.
Solution: StoreVault S500
Mark Herman, Director of IT at Lift-All, knew that a SAN solution could resolve many of his challenges. He was considering a Dell/EMC solution when he learnt of StoreVault from a friend working in the PA State System of Higher Education. The RAID-DP feature for data security and the ability to use multiple StoreVaults fordisaster recovery were especially appealing for Mark.
He purchased two StoreVault S500s, two Dell PowerEdge 2950s and two Dell PowerConnect GB switches. Each StoreVault unit was configured with 8 250GB drives (6 Data, 1 RAID-DP, 1 Hot Spare) and CIFS, NFS, StoreVault Replication and SnapManager for Exchange licenses.
The 2950s replaced two of the older servers [Dell 6450s] enabling the introduction of virtual servers using VMware. Virtualization helped reduce the number of physical servers required to handle planned growth and to create servers based on their application roles. Virtual server files and all Windows databases/files now reside on StoreVault. CIFS is used for file sharing while iSCSI LUNs are used for storing virtual servers. ERP Database movement is in process using NFS shares on StoreVault.
Lift-all is currently using one S500 for production while replicating snapshots to the 2nd S500 for disaster recovery. Tape backups which were performed at night were now undertaken during business hours using the second S500, saving a significant amount of time.
Once the ERP software is migrated to S500, UNIX server backups and the LTO-3 tape drive associated with it will be decommissioned. Additionally, installing SnapManager for Exchange will allow managing mailboxes better in terms of size and recovery of single mailbox items.
Customer Experience
Mark says “The Storevault S500 allows a mid-sized business like Lift-All to create a robust SAN solution that was not previously available to companies in our budget range.”
The installation was problem-free and took just 3-4 hours. The VAR, Matthew White with Technisource in Mechanicsburg, PA was very familiar with the Storevault line, and helped Mark realize the product features and cost savings over the Dell/EMC solution.Shifting data to StoreVault has significantly reduced the CPU & memory usage on the servers. Mark says “We have had many positive comments from users with regard to increased network speed.”
Customer Benefits
With StoreVault, adding or allocating storage space takes just minutes instead of hours or days as in the previous scenario. StoreVault also helps in lowering costs by eliminating the need to upgrade servers whenever more storage space is required and reducing administration costs. Consolidating all VM’s and data onto the SAN has helped in creating a robust disaster recovery plan that may not otherwise have been possible with current budget.
With StoreVault, disaster recovery and virtualization are no longer heavy-lifting.
