American Association of Neurological Surgeons Accelerates Backup With Quantum DXi

Quantum Corp. announced that the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) has demonstrated dramatically increased backup performance and gained 27 times more raw storage capacity by utilizing a Quantum DXi-Series disk-based backup and replication appliance with data de-duplication technology. Deployed in June 2007, the DXi3500 quickly solved AANS’ struggle with lengthy, incomplete and failing backups and provided a cost-effective data protection platform that will likely accommodate the association’s demanding storage needs for at least the next five years.
 
A scientific and educational association with 7,200 members worldwide, AANS is dedicated to advancing the specialty of neurological surgery to provide the highest quality care to the public. The organization’s five-person IT department, which manages three sites, 32 servers and seven Web sites, turned to Quantum to assist doctors and association staff with reliable service and iron-clad data protection.
 
Before deploying Quantum’s DXi-Series appliance, the AANS IT team was heavily burdened by its data backup processes. The association was using an older tape system that was becoming increasingly over-taxed, and its nightly backups were extending into the business day, impacting the IT department’s productivity. AANS recognized that disk-based backup could address its performance problem and sought an affordable solution that would meet its specific backup and retention service level agreements.
 
“After an extensive evaluation of multiple vendors, we selected the Quantum DXi3500 appliance because we were excited about the benefits delivered by data de-duplication technology and Quantum’s proven track record of providing storage solutions that deliver superior performance and reliability,” said Anthony Prochaska, network administrator for AANS. “Our implementation was no exception. The results we’ve achieved have exceeded our requirements across the board – our backup performance increased more than three times, and we’ve eliminated failed or incomplete backup jobs. The capacity advantage of the DXi-Series data de-duplication has also far surpassed our expectations.”
 
Without data de-duplication, AANS would have filled a conventional disk backup system too quickly. Thus far, the association has achieved better than a 27 to 1 de-duplication ratio with the DXi™ appliance – it can retain 27 TB of raw backup data in only 1 TB of usable disk space – thereby enabling it to keep more than a month’s worth of data on fast recovery disk.
 
“The DXi3500 is quick to deploy – our implementation took under an hour – and because it’s a ‘plug and play’ solution, it is very easy to manage,” Prochaska added. “We plan to add a second DXi-Series appliance in the near future which will allow us to replicate data between sites, improve disaster recovery protection and further reduce costs and management associated with tape media handling.”

Quantum Corp.

American Association of Neurological Surgeons