iSCSI SAN: Hifnâ's iSCSI IP SAN Is Foundation For Virtual Server Implementation At Rockford Construction
Hifnâ's, the catalyst behind storage and networking innovation, recently announced that Rockford Construction has selected its Swarm 3200 Series iSCSI Storage Appliance to eliminate offsite storage data protection risks and lengthy restore times while ensuring maximum flexibility and availability of critical data.
Founded in 1987 to provide comprehensive real estate delivery services to the West Michigan region, Rockford today employs more than 200 people and builds in more than 450 cities throughout 20 states. The company is committed to providing clients with a 'one-stop shoppingâ' construction experience by managing every detail, from design to completion, including services for land purchase and development, site and municipal approvals, financing assistance and selection of subcontractors and suppliers.
Rockford relies on a Microsoft infrastructure comprised of Microsoft Server 2003 servers supporting its Exchange email system, SQL database and SharePoint 2007 collaboration system. With a growing number of construction projects, data related to contract information, site plans and project management correspondence was rapidly overtaking server storage capacity. As a temporary solution the company began to take large amounts of data offline to conserve existing server storage. This presented company-impeding data access problems for employees that needed instant access to data that had been moved offline.
"Restoring data as it was being requested was taking valuable time away from other critical IT tasks," said Shawn Partridge, Vice President of Information Technology, Rockford Construction. Hifnâ's iSCSI IP SAN is Foundation for Virtual Server Implementation at Rockford Construction "Moving to a SAN was a top priority so that we could bring offline storage back online and reduce the risk of physical data loss. I used a Swarm SAN in my previous company and was impressed by its easy installation and management. It was once again my No. 1 choice based on price, performance and flexibility. We are now realizing huge savings in both hard costs and time. But, even more importantly, our critical data is now both reliably protected and continuously available for employees to access right when they need it most."
Partridge consolidated the Rockford environment from seven servers to two virtual servers using Virtual Iron software. The company selected a Hifn Swarm 3200 Series iSCSI IP SAN configured with 7.5TB of storage to deliver the power and flexibility it needed to bring its volumes of offline data back online for easy access and protection. With the Swarm, Partridge can easily perform backups directly from the SAN and now has the assurance that the data is protected and available 24x7.
"Rockford has gone from working with an aging storage infrastructure to benefiting from a powerful virtualized environment that will ensure the continuous availability of its business-critical information," said John Matze, Vice President of Business Development at Hifn. â'With the Hifn Swarm, Rockford now is able to simplify the backup process through integrated disk-to-disk snapshots, easily configure the system with a centralized web-based management console and perform automated backups without the need for a backup server. This is a solution that benefits the company now and into the future."
About Swarm IP SAN Appliances from Hifn
The Swarm is a series of IP SAN appliances that delivers the benefits of storage networking to small and mid-sized business that want encryption, storage consolidation, centralized management, automatic backup, high availability and seamless integration with the Microsoft operating environment.
The Hifn Swarm Series of iSCSI storage appliances provides an ideal IP SAN storage alternative to complex and costly Fibre Channel products with up to 9.75 terabytes of RAID-6 protected storage along with a full suite of storage services, including encryption, replication, point-in-time copy backup used for Windows Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS)-consistent snapshots and multipath I/O for high availability active-active configurations. Swarm IP SAN solutions are available now starting at $8,995.
For more information please visit: www.hifn.com/appliance
Hifnâ's iSCSI IP SAN is Foundation for Virtual Server Implementation at Rockford Construction
About Hifn
Hifn delivers the key channel and OEM ingredients for 21st century storage and networking environments. Leveraging over a decade of leadership and expertise in the development of purpose-built Applied Service Processors (ASPs), Hifn is a trusted partner to industry leaders for whom infrastructure innovation in storage and networking is critical to success. With the majority of secure networked communications flowing through Hifn technology, the 21st century convergence of storage and networking drives our product roadmap forward. For more information, please visit:
www.hifn.com.
SOURCE: Hifnâ