Modular Tape Library System Helps County Keep Pace With Dramatic Growth

Business issues
Steep growth in their computing and storage environment pushed Alachua County's backup systems to their limit. The County had outgrown its legacy StorageTek L80 tape library and DLT tape drives that were protecting its terabytes of data. Often, it took as much as three days to complete backups, during which time, data awaiting its turn was at risk.

Solutions
Alachua IT managers hired a Sun StorageTek™ services team to complete an assessment of their environment and outline a cost-effective solution. With cabling, installation and configuration assistance from StorageTek services personnel, Alachua deployed a StreamLine SL500 modular library system, configured with faster-throughput LTO Ultrium Generation 3 tape drives. The SL500 backs up primary, application-critical servers, while an L80 tape library was reassigned to backup less-critical servers.

Business benefits
The reliability and faster throughput of the SL500 library and its LTO Gen 3 tape drives enabled staff productivity gains. For example, the County's backup window shrank from three days to seven hours, a 90 percent reduction. Previously, two employees spent the majority of their time monitoring and administering backup activities—and the department was on track to hire two more. The solution allowed the County to maintain its current headcount by slashing the time administrators spend on backup duties. As the County's data continues to growth, the SL500 can easily scale from a base configuration of 30 slots to 575 slots to meet the need.