White Paper

Success Story: Data Base File Tech

Situated on a veritable monolith floating on the Earth's crust, Data Base File Tech (DBFT) maintains one of the most secure storage sites in the world. The company's Victoria, British Columbia facility tops a geological phenomenon of igneous rock measuring several kilometers across and 80 kilometers in depth. DBFT literally provides a rock-solid foundation for the high security storage of both physical and digital assets.

DBFT previously relied on tape-based storage subsystems from StorageTek and IBM as the backup target for its customers' data. According to Maurice Auger, director of operations of DBFT, neither provided the performance required by the growing company. Auger and his associates began reviewing the firm's backup capabilities and recommended upgrades. They looked at disk-based products from companies such as EMC, Network Appliance and IBM. While fast and scalable, these products posed integration and management challenges that caused Auger to keep shopping. Upon the recommendation of Atempo, their storage management software provider, DBFT's management investigated the Quantum DX30.

"As a storage solutions provider, we needed a high performance storage subsystem that was flexible, scalable, easy to manage and cost efficient," said Auger. "We have incredible bandwidth and needed a backup target for our SAN that could handle the demands. Tape has not met our requirements in the past, so we looked for a disk-based solution. Since we rely on Time Navigator from Atempo, we weigh their recommendations seriously. They suggested Quantum's new enhanced backup system, the DX30. We contacted Quantum, joined their beta program for the DX30, and have been extremely pleased with the product." "The beta unit tested very well, with performance of about 200GB/hour," noted Auger. "In addition to performance benefits and ease of installation, we were very pleased with the environmental benefits provided by the DX30. The unit, when idle, makes very little demands for power or air conditioning, which minimizes data center expenses. Unlike tape libraries, the DX30 has a very small form factor for its capacity, so floor space is minimized as well." Bob Gignac, director of business development with Data Base File Tech, proudly displays the company's first installed Quantum DX30 atop a rack of Dell PowerEdge servers.

Key Business Benefits

  • Reduced administration, simplified management
  • Easy to buy, deploy and use
  • Remote site backup for disaster recovery
  • Minimal power, cooling and floor space requirements
  • Provide basis for geographical expansion of market

Solution Overview

  • Quantum DX30
  • Dell PowerEdge 2550 servers running Windows 2000
  • QLogic HBAs and switch
  • Atempo Time Navigator

Integration of the DX30 beta unit was simple. DBFTs SAN consists of Dell PowerEdge 2550 servers running Windows 2000 with QLogic HBAs and switch. Quantum support engineers were on site to oversee installation, which consisted of plugging the unit into the SAN, powering up and configuring it. Since the DX30 emulates existing automated tape libraries, Atempos Time Navigator recognized it immediately.

We are an application solutions provider. Our primary application is backup/restore. The faster we can perform these operations for our customers and do it with less manual intervention and a minimum of environmental overhead the better, stated Auger. Not only does the DX30 provide a distinct business benefit by complementing our business model, it also gives us a strategic advantage over our competitors, who are duplicating tape, manually swapping tape in and out of drives and distributing copies by courier in some cases. Our customerÕs data, while residing on our SAN, is virtually online. Our customers can issue a restore order to the DX30, which, unlike tape, responds in seconds.

Today, DBFT continues to leverage its new disk-based backup system with immediate plans for expansion. A second facility is under construction in Prince George at the University of Northern British Columbias Research and Development Park. The new site will be equipped with another DX30 in a secure vault and will mirror the Victoria-based DX30 for disaster protection purposes.

Because of the powerful remote administration and management features found in the DX30, the Prince George facility will be nearly staff-free, stated Bob Gignac, director of business development of DBFT. The DX30 allows us to manage over 50TB of data with two administrators at our Victoria facility. We have been able to eliminate the need for an on-site operator, which is mandatory with tape-based backup. Since our services are provided on a per-gigabyte schedule, our margin dramatically improves with disk-based backup because it reduces expenses normally associated with tape.

Prior to implementing the DX30, our market was primarily Victoria. That is because of the physical nature of tape, its transport and archivalrequirements,said Gignac. With the DX30, there are no geographical limits to our service. We are currently closing a deal with a customer in Georgia and are investigating the feasibility of licensing our solution internationally. With the Quantum DX30 disk-based backup systems providing a solid foundation for its SANs, Auger said DBFT is well positioned to handle tremendous growth. We expect to add a DX30 every 30 to 60 days. Looking down the road, we plan to manage between 1,000 and 2,000TB of data with DX30s.