First Option Mortgage Powers Virtualized Datacenter With StorTrends

StorTrends, trademark of American Megatrends, Inc. announced that its SAN storage appliances have been implemented by First Option Mortgage, LLC to affordably support and manage the three-tier storage structure of its virtualized datacenter.

Using StorTrends, First Option Mortgage has seen value across its tier 2 and tier 3 data stores, making its journey to datacenter virtualization efficient.

Based in Atlanta, GA., First Option Mortgage has a national footprint with a growing family of more than 200 employees. With continued expansion, the firm’s IT team was experiencing the strain of its continued expansion. The company’s data center was completely physical just a few years ago, but with growth the team saw the need to virtualize. First Option is almost fully virtual and has nearly 100 VMware ESX servers serving its business applications.

This growing environment needed to better support its storage infrastructure. As a way to avoid overburdening its storage resources, the organization implemented three tiers of storage: tier 1 is used to support its absolute mission-critical data which is accessed hourly and daily. Tier 2 storage is employed to manage frequently accessed, but non-priority data and tier 3 storage is used to serve its backup and archiving processes.

When it came time for First Option to find a solution that would efficiently support its tiered data structure, they needed a system that was reliable and simple to use. It also needed to be VMware compatible and affordable. StorTrends SAN solutions became the number one choice.

The GUI of the StorTrends ManageTrends software caught the attention of Matt Berry, VP of IT, First Option Mortgage.

“The StorTrends ManageTrends GUI is absolutely the best GUI I’ve seen. It’s ridiculously easy to use. That and StorTrends’ highly affordable pricing made it a compelling product for our Tier II and III needs,” he said.

First Option is using two StorTrends arrays with SATA drives to support tier 2 and tier 3 data, managing roughly 16TB of total capacity.

“The StorTrends solutions at first option have been a very good investment. The SANs do exactly as promised. For the money and ease of use, StorTrends is a real value,” added Barry.

“The StorTrends solutions are ideally suited for the tiered data management structures in today’s enterprises. They offer the high performance and reliability needed to robustly serve mission critical data, and the cost effectiveness to also deliver an exceptional ROI for Tier III applications,” said Justin Bagby, director of the StorTrends division. “For organizations such as First Option Mortgage, this means exceptional performance with the simplicity and management ease of a common solution.“