Tandberg Data announced that Cardinal Newman College, one of the UK’s leading further education establishments, is using Tandberg Data’s Storage Library T40 solution to achieve automated daily backups of critical data, responding to data growth which is doubling year on year at the college.

Cardinal Newman College

The StorageLibrary T40, from Tandberg Data, offers one of the greatest capacities in its class to combat the college’s data growth.  Rick Boyce, Network Developer, Cardinal Newman College, noted: “We wanted to put in place a solution that we would not outgrow and would last the college at least the next 3 to 5 years. Our previous capacity requirement was close to 2TB, but since the storage restrictions have been eased, we are already close to 4TB on the network, but that really doesn’t concern us. With Tandberg Data’s StorageLibrary, we can just keep increasing capacity as and when we need to through Capacity on Demand (COD) – in fact, we can scale up to 64TB should we ever need to.”
 
Daily backups are reliably achieved every night, within a 6-hour timeframe
The staff and students of Cardinal Newman College are supported by around 700 PC’s. The popularity and expansion of the college has seen data growth doubling year on year and had meant that previously backups were taking over 24 hours or would fail mid-job. The performance, provided by the StorageLibrary T40, means daily backups are reliably achieved every night, within a 6-hour timeframe. In terms of throughput, what used to be achieved in minutes is now achieved in seconds with the StorageLibrary.
 
Willow Starcom, an accredited partner of Tandberg Data, initially advised Cardinal Newman College to explore the functionality and attractive price point offered with the Tandberg Data StorageLibrary T40.
 
In addition to the potential cost savings, the small 4U factor particularly attracted Cardinal Newman College to the StorageLibrary T40 as space is at a premium. The enhanced performance, achieved with the LT0-4 drives offering fibre channel connectivity, allowing several operations to be conducted simultaneously, made choosing the StorageLibrary T40 an easy decision.
 
Following a simple and fast installation process the StorageLibrary was talking to file servers on the fibre channel SAN within a few hours. Cardinal Newman College is enjoying the Management and maintenance features of the StorageLibrary, which ensure minimized downtime and can be accessed remotely, Rick Boyce comments: “The changes using the StorageLibrary for management are significant. Its error notification automatically flags if anything is amiss, and we have found the GUI really user-friendly. Our job is now really just one of monitoring.”
 
Complete daily backups are now an established, reliable routine. The system, a combination of the Tandberg StorageLibrary and BakBone’s NetVault software, has provided faultless recovery in real life conditions, Rick Boyce comments “A recent power failure caused by nearby building work left the data within the StorageLibrary completely intact and backup operations resumed seamlessly once power was restored.”
 
Summarising Rick Boyce concludes, “In conclusion, what we have experienced with the Tandberg Data StorageLibrary is a powerful, but not overly complex, encompassing system that effectively manages the whole backup process for us.”