IPR International Improves Data Security and Availability While Lowering Overall Costs by 40% with Nexsan

Nexsan’s Assureon online archive gives IPR the reliability and compliance-level privacy it needs to deliver high data availability to its customers while reducing overall costs by 40%

Leading disaster recovery and data protection service provider IPR International was facing growing operational and capital costs associated with its data archive infrastructure for customer emails and unstructured files. Needing to lower overall costs without risking the high service-level they guarantee their demanding customer base, IPR turned to Nexsan. Nexsan’s Assureon online archive has given IPR the reliability and compliance-level privacy it needed to deliver high data availability to its customers while reducing overall costs by 40%.

Headquartered in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, and serving clients in 17 countries, IPR International was founded on a simple concept: that technology will change at such a rapid pace that most mid-size organizations will not be able to keep up with it. Thus, the company has dedicated itself to providing state-of-the-art data protection technologies, so clients can focus on their core business operations knowing their electronic data is safe and accessible at all times.

A recognized leader in managed data center and data protection services, IPR International offers a comprehensive suite of solutions to protect, preserve, secure and make available clients’ data at all times. By offering constantly improving and evolving services combined with a passion for security, integrity, availability and ingenuity, IPR helps its clients maintain their own business operations and supports them through any interruptions.

For IPR, the service levels offered to their customers are critical. While governments and corporations alike require that data be kept for extended periods of time, and in a retrievable form, inactive data can have a negative impact on the performance of the production environment. To help solve these challenges, IPR needed a robust archiving solution that would satisfy operational, performance and compliance requirements for its clients.

“Our customers need to reduce the capital and operational costs of managing and archiving data,” said Kevin Sullivan, head of services, development and marketing, IPR International. “Additionally, our customers need to improve their compliance posture by using a service where they can reallocate their IT resources for other, more strategically important objectives. We created our DataGuardian® service to meet these increasing customer demands.”

With customers ranging from mid-sized law firms and insurance companies to healthcare organizations, IPR takes its DataGuardian service levels very seriously. These types of organizations require constant access to their email and unstructured file data while being prepared to recover from any disaster, from simple server outages to extensive unexpected natural events. To meet backend storage needs, IPR was using a combination of NetApp and EMC SANs. However, the infrastructure was becoming increasingly costly and difficult to manage as the volume of customer data increased. To maintain very high service levels for their customers without incurring extensive costs, IPR needed to identify an alternative archiving solution upon which to base its DataGuardian service.

Solution: A Comprehensive Archiving and Failover Strategy Based on Nexsan’s Assureon and SATABeast Systems
After evaluating the high cost of expanding its existing infrastructure, IPR began to look for a highly reliable, lower cost alternative. During their search, IPR evaluated a number of solutions, including those from Nexsan and EMC. IPR selected Nexsan’s Assureon archiving platform over Centera because of the flexibility in configuring redundancy. With Centera, two copies are required at both the local and disaster recovery site in order to ensure redundancy.
Replicating to another Centera would mean having four copies of archived data (two at each site) instead of one per site. While Assureon can be configured similarly, it also allows administrators to configure the systems so that only a single copy is stored on each Assureon while ensuring the highest levels of data protection. IPR still maintains two copies of the data, but they are at two locations in order to provide DR protection. IPR deployed two Assureon appliances, each with two SATABeast systems, connected via 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel. Each Assureon / SATABeast combination is installed at separate IPR locations and set to failover to the other in case of any failure. With Assureon, IPR has doubled its usable capacity over Centera while spending less on purchase costs and operating expenses. Nexsan’s Assureon storage appliances provide IPR with a safe, cost-effective means to archive the growing volumes of customer email. The appliances keep email online and rapidly retrievable so that customers always have access to them. At the same time, the Assureon appliances dramatically reduce the time required to back-up current, active email by offloading archived email into a separate repository. “We were very impressed with the reliability and flexibility of the Nexsan solution,” said Sullivan. “Assureon is delivered as an appliance, with the storage, and Nexsan remotely connects, monitors and performs automatic updates on the systems without our staff involvement, which makes these systems exceptionally easy to administer.”

Results: High Performance and Reliability Means Strong Customer Satisfaction
The Nexsan Assureon solution has reduced IPR’s overall capital and operating expenses by 40% compared to expanding their previous solution. Cost savings have come from replacing NetApp Filers and EMC Celerra NAS systems (traditional iSCSI and CIFS storage) with the Assureon CAS storage archive. With Assureon, Nexsan has delivered the most efficient and scalable approach to storing unstructured data (email and documents).

In addition, the Nexsan-based storage infrastructure ensures that IPR can deliver high service-level guarantees to its customers while knowing that it has the scalability to easily grow its storage capacity to meet future customer needs. Benefits IPR has received from its Nexsan-based archiving infrastructure include:
• Compliance-level privacy – Assureon uses innovative security features to ensure data privacy. The software establishes an unalterable audit trail for the life of data in the archive; every time archive content is accessed, a record is kept of who accessed it and when.
• High-availability storage – Supporting the innovative Assureon appliance is Nexsan’s highly reliable SATABeast green storage, which provides redundant controllers, power supplies and fans along with support for RAID 6 to overcome double drive failures.
• Automated retention and deletion – Assureon offers automated integrity management and file immutability technology that protect against accidental or unauthorized file deletion. This ensures that files can be retained for regulation compliance or flexible time periods, and be deleted when their retention period is over.
• Self-auditing and self-healing – Assureon continually monitors files for fingerprint discrepancies, protecting them against tampering, viruses and corruption as well as accidental or deliberate deletion or theft. If discrepancies are discovered, Assureon notifies the system administrator and self-heals the file.

“Nexsan has greatly reduced the IT resources required to deliver recovery services thereby improving overall cost-efficiency for clients,” said Sullivan. “We are happy to have selected Assureon as our archiving platform and very content with what the solution has allowed us to do.”

About IPR
IPR was founded as one of the first Managed Electronic Data Protection Service Providers in the United States and is one of the very few companies to have developed and deployed a complete set of services to protect its clients’ data. Currently, IPR protects data for over 240 clients in 17 countries around the globe, providing protection for over 2.5 petabytes of data in our Data Centers. With the opening of the IPR Reading Business Continuity Center in 2008 and the Wilmington Data Center in 2010, IPR has expanded its Managed Data Center and Infrastructure Services to include production and dedicated recovery computing environments for our clients. IPR enjoys a 97% client retention rate, as well as 40% annual growth per year. IPR has been named one of “Fastest Growing Companies” in the Philadelphia Region (“Philadelphia 100”) in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 and Inc. Magazine ranked IPR as number 593 on its first-ever“ Inc. 5000” list of the Fastest-Growing Private Companies in 2007.

Read this case study in its entirety at http://www.nexsan.com/case_studies/Nexsan_CaseStudy_IPR_International.pdf

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Nexsan CTO Gary Watson Named 2010 Storage Superstar by CRN Magazine

Mr. Watson Honored for a Decade of Innovations in Disk Storage Technology

Thousand Oaks, Calif., July 27, 2010 — Nexsan, a leading storage system provider, today announced that its Chief Technology Officer Gary Watson has been chosen as a “2010 Storage Superstar” by CRN Magazine. The CRN Storage Superstar awards recognize the achievements and contributions of visionaries and innovators in the data storage industry.

CRN recognized Mr. Watson for more than a decade of achievements and his consistent breakthroughs in disk-based storage technology. Mr. Watson co-founded Nexsan in 1999 and spearheaded the development of the industry's first enterprise-class ATA storage arrays. He was also responsible for the first ATA-based disk storage systems to rival tape ushering in affordable disk-to-disk backup. Mr. Watson is also credited with developing the first RAID system with an embedded web GUI for simple remote management.

Mr. Watson’s achievements include advanced power-managed storage with AutoMAID® (Automatic Massive Array of Idle Disks) technology enabling energy-efficient disk storage for use in primary, backup and archive storage environments. Nexsan’s power-managed storage systems serve as the foundation for the company’s innovative storage applications like data deduplication. Leveraging AutoMAID, organizations reduce storage related energy costs as much as 60% while lowering data center cooling requirements for green IT efficiencies.

Mr. Watson has also delivered innovations to enhance the reliability of high density storage systems. Examples of these developments include rotational vibration dampening for enhanced disk drive longevity, the use of engineered materials to absorb vibration and reduce mechanical failures, and advanced cooling designs. As a result, customers benefit from reliable storage system performance that significantly lowers maintenance related downtime.

“Solution providers who design and deploy storage infrastructures deal with a technology where change is the only constant,” said Kelley Damore, VP, Editorial Director, Everything Channel. “Small businesses and enterprises alike need to safely store, back-up, recover and archive data and these Storage Superstars are many of the unsung heroes who have helped invent better ways of doing this. Yet many of these individuals seldom get the recognition they deserve. We congratulate all the ‘Storage Superstars,’ and are happy to provide an opportunity to shine the spotlight on them.”

“This is a wonderful honor from CRN and it validates Nexsan’s vision of leveraging reliable, highly efficient storage designs to deliver enterprise-class storage systems purpose built for the midmarket,” said Mr. Watson. “This innovative approach has established new standards in storage density, energy-efficiency and price/performance.”

Learn more about the entire Nexsan product line at www.nexsan.com/products.php.

Follow Nexsan Products and News on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/nexsan

Resources
CRN Magazine 2010 Storage Superstars
2010 DCIG Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide
Nexsan Products, Case Studies and White Papers

About Nexsan
Nexsan Corporation is a leading provider of energy-efficient, long-term storage systems. Nexsan delivers secure storage appliances and modular, capacity-optimized disk-storage systems for a broad range of applications including fixed content storage and archiving, email, medical imaging, compliance and litigation support, disk-based backup, digital video security, and rich media. Nexsan’s solutions are the choice of small and medium-sized companies as well as large global enterprises and major governmental agencies around the world that are seeking cost-correct, high-density storage solutions. Founded in 1999 and based in Thousand Oaks, California, Nexsan sells its products exclusively through a select global network of VARs, OEMs and system integrators. For more information, please see the company’s website at www.nexsan.com.

About Everything Channel
Everything Channel is the premier provider of IT channel-focused events, media, research, consulting, and sales and marketing services. With over 30 years of experience and engagement, Everything Channel has the unmatched channel expertise to execute integrated solutions for technology executives managing partner recruitment, enablement and go-to-market strategy in order to accelerate technology sales. Everything Channel is a UBM company. To learn more about Everything Channel, visit us at http://www.everythingchannel.com.

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Nexsan Technologies is a registered trademark and AutoMAID is a trademark of Nexsan.
All other product or company names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective owners.

The Guide To Green Storage – Free Download

Maximizing Storage Power Efficiency without Sacrificing Performance

Waste. It’s what your data center is making of your energy and money right now with today’s storage arrays. By the time you finish this 10 minute white paper, the storage infrastructure within your data center will have just pushed up to 70% more carbon into the atmosphere, consumed up to 70% more power and up to 70% more cooling than it needed to. Over a year, a typical 42TB storage solution will push 8.9 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere that otherwise could have been COMPLETELY eliminated by a power efficient storage subsystem that meets or exceeds ALL the same performance, reliability and cost requirements demanded by your business.

It’s easy to ‘tune out’ those kinds of talking points as IT professionals have grown more and more cynical of vendor marketing that always seems to over-promise and under-deliver. But if green initiatives play a role in your organization’s priorities, power consumption solutions to the storage infrastructure are one of the easiest to implement and, thus, belong at the top of IT.

View this paper in its entirety at http://www.nexsan.com/whitepapers/Nexsan_WhitePaper_Green_Storage_Guide_GA122409-A.pdf

Additionally, for a comprehensive comparison of midrange storage arrays, visit the Data Center Infrastructure Group (DCIG) and download the free Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide at http://www.dciginc.com/2010/06/free-download-dcig-midrange-array-buyers-guide.html