RealTime Services Deploys DataCore SANmelody

DataCore Software announced that RealTime Services, a service and support company for small staffing firms, has deployed and “gone live” with SANmelody™ for its mission-critical online transaction processing (OLTP) application that supports payroll services for RealTime’s clients. SANmelody supports the company’s Microsoft cluster environment, which includes SQL database and Exchange email servers.
 
“I looked at LeftHand Networks, EqualLogic, HP, and others before choosing DataCore,” said Jeff Sabotin, IT Director, RealTime Services. “As I was looking at these offerings, I realized that you pretty much get stuck with their box. I did not want to go with a proprietary-type hardware solution that just pigeon-holes me by not giving me the expandability or supporting the growth that I would like to have down the road. Who knows what the future is going to hold?”
 
RealTime Services differentiates itself in supporting personnel agencies by delivering instant pay. The direct-attached storage that RealTime Services had was simply not fast enough to support the instant pay service that RealTime prides itself on. Now, the SAN supports the company’s ability to perform these instant pay transactions, which put a worker’s pay on a pay card or on a check and includes hours worked, employee information as well as all deductions required by law.
 
RealTime Services was managing disks on multiple systems. However, Sabotin did not like the fact that with the direct-attached, storage array approach, if he were to need more storage it would entail a complete overhaul as well as copying the data over to the new system. He realized that a centralized SAN server would overcome these problems and also deliver expandability.
 
“In a batch environment the traditional storage array approach probably would have been fine,” said Sabotin. “However, this application supports our growing client base and increased online usage. The storage array was slowing down our database quite severely.” According to Sabotin, in looking at an upgrade, the company was looking at adding more disks or even new servers for its SQL database. What he and his team found out was that the database itself was really the slowdown and that in terms of the email server, the disk-to-drive sub-system accounted for the slowdown.
 
Sabotin realized that a DataCore SAN could fix both of the major problems that were confronting him. “DataCore’s SANmelody could give me speed,” he said. “It could give me expandability. It could give me more space. And it could solve these issues for two of my main servers – my email server and my database server.” The net impact after adding DataCore was a 6x increase in transactions processed.
 
RealTime Services relies on SANmelody as a disk server that delivers fast disk-to-disk backup and solves their disk storage issues. The original impetus for deploying a SAN had to do with supporting business growth and supporting the functions that the company’s software made possible – more paychecks cut, more people online, and addressing the aforementioned speed issue. At the same time, RealTime Services’ clients were asking for more document imaging. They were seeking to pull up from RealTime’s system the actual paycheck and actual invoice that was issued. The IT team knew that this was going to grow the size of the database significantly.
 
RealTime Services offers a full line of services, including accounting, taxes, payroll as well as collection services that clients can pick from a la carte. RealTime has the software, the processes and the procedures that solve the “payroll to billing” time gap and meet the immediate payroll needs of small staffing firms. Interestingly at a company of thirty people, RealTime has six full-time computer programmers that are focused on developing and maintaining the company’s software, which is tailored to support RealTime’s clients by offering more functions and delivering more services, particularly in the areas of scheduling and staffing.
 
The company’s software amounts to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that has been developed over the span of eight years. This requires a fair amount of support as it functions as a customer relationship management (CRM) system, a payroll system, an invoicing system, a billing system and a collection system, all-in-one. In addition, there are numerous front-end, customer-facing web sites that are built off of the back-end system.
 
The website that RealTime Services offers, which is supported by SANmelody, provides staffers, at the various firms that are RealTime clients, with the ability to access their paychecks and tax information from the system via the web. The IT staff is also working on a web site that enables clients to access their invoices and will support their ability to pay their invoices via the web.
 
Sabotin is also using DataCore’s UpTempo performance acceleration software to speed up the disk sub-system on his computer. According to Sabotin, “UpTempo can take a PC and make it faster; it is that simple. Hardware manufacturers will often tout how fast their processor is. However, they rarely tout how fast their disk sub-system is. Processors are outpacing disks by a long shot and disks just can’t keep up because they are probably 10-20x slower than the processor. UpTempo can make the disk sub-system feel like it is close to equal to the processor.”
 
UpTempo can speed up I/O performance by 2-3x. However, instances where I/O performance is improved by 15x is not uncommon. It depends on how much applications are constrained by I/O bottlenecks. UpTempo’s powerful disk cache helps optimize system resource utilization by applying processor and memory resources to the I/O bottleneck problem.

Real Time Services
 
DataCore Software