Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

ANTARES IMPROVES PERFORMANCE WITH NEXSAN D2D SOLUTION

Staying competitive in today's business environment requires a company to keep a tight lid on costs throughout the organization. For Antares Management Solutions, the key to escaping the expense of mainframe-based tape backup was a cost-correct disk-to-disk backup solution from Nexsan Technologies, a leader in innovative storage solutions.

Antares is an integrated application service and total business solutions provider. The company provides strategic solutions by managing the delivery of best-in-class information technology and business practices and is nationally recognized for its world-class information technology capabilities. Antares Management Solutions is a division of Medical Mutual Services, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Medical Mutual, Ohio's oldest and largest health insurer.

Antares turned to a Nexsan solution designed by Rich Kuhar of Akron, OH-based ARKAY Storage Solutions to solve the backup problems for its distributed environment. The company was restricted by a mainframe-based distributed backup architecture that lacked the required support, speed and flexibility and represented a major cost issue. According to Tom Hearn, hardware and software specialist at Antares, the company's distributed backup software would not be supported. It consisted of three large StorageTek silos with more than 15,000 tape slots and 25,000 cartridges, did not allow the company the flexibility to perform an offsite copy of data and applications deployed on distributed Windows and UNIX servers without having to backup all mainframe data as well.

"We couldn't cost effectively get data backup offsite," said Hearn. "While we were able to restore data and retain copies, if our Data Center experienced a catastrophic event, we could have a problem."

A change was needed and initially Hearn and a diversified team investigated adding local tape backup to the distributed server environment. After further research, that idea was quickly discarded in favor of a Nexsan solution. "When we started out, we were just going to back up to tape," said Hearn. "However, when we conducted further research, we discovered Nexsan and the significant cost savings it would deliver. We then rethought our initial plan."

"The more we discussed their problem and talked it through, the more they realized that backing up to disk was a better solution," said Kuhar.

ARKAY installed 8.5 terabytes of affordable Nexsan disk-based storage running under Commvault software to handle all UNIX and Windows backup. By offloading the distributed backup demands from the mainframe tape installation, Hearn has reduced his backup storage costs to $8.72 per GB versus $120.15 per GB, while gaining improved backup flexibility and performance. Antares was able to eliminate one complete STK silo, eight mainframe tape drives and the tape media and backup software licensing costs for 7000 tape slots.

"We did an outstanding job designing a customized infrastructure, which solved our business problem. It has really worked well," said Hearn. "And if we need to restore files, it's much faster from disk, as it's here on site."

The backup cost savings have both direct and indirect benefits for Antares. By lowering the overall cost structure of the operation, the company now has the ability to make more competitive bids when soliciting new outsourcing customers. But for Hearn, it's a case of moving to a faster, more cost effective and superior backup solution.

"It's unbelievable. You're talking less than a penny per megabyte versus 6 to 10 cents a megabyte for mainframe enterprise storage. In the distributed area the process is less expensive, more flexible than and as reliable as the mainframe disk."