Wintek Has Implemented Xiotech Magnitude 3D 4000 SAN

Xiotech Corporation announced that Wintek Corporation recently selected and implemented a Xiotech Magnitude 3D®
4000 storage area network (SAN). The storage system was implemented as
the organization moved to a consolidated, virtualized server and
storage environment, and is providing the high data availability and
reliability Wintek and its customers rely on for business continuity.

Lafayette, Ind.-based Wintek Corporation is a regional Internet
Services Provider and Cisco reseller with more than 600 enterprise
customers, including banks, government institutions and educational
organizations. With Wintek hosting data for its customers, reliable,
high-speed access is critical, yet Wintek’s pre-existing IT
infrastructure–which included direct-attached storage–was showing its
limitations. By mid-2007, minor hardware failures were occurring,
backup processes were becoming increasingly cumbersome and actual
physical space to house the servers was becoming an issue.

After researching options, Wintek decided a virtualized approach
combined with storage and server consolidation would best solve its
challenges, and selected Xiotech’s Magnitude 3D 4000
system with VMware ESX Server. The integration of Magnitude 3D 4000
with VMware’s high-availability and load-balancing capabilities ensures
maximum system reliability for Wintek and its customers.

"If one of our Web servers goes down, it not only puts our
reputation at risk, but our customers’ reputations as well," said
Oliver Beers, network engineer, Wintek. "We were really impressed with
how well the Xiotech Magnitude 3D system integrated with our VMware ESX
Server environment to provide us with a highly available virtualized
server and storage infrastructure."

"We’ve already seen significant time and cost savings through our
server and storage consolidation efforts, and we believe we have the
best solution possible from a business continuity perspective," added
Beers.

Wintek’s Magnitude 3D 4000 system is built on a virtualized,
distributed cluster architecture that enables Wintek to easily create
virtual disk point-in-time copies and mirrors. This creates valuable
efficiencies in the areas of data repurposing, online backup and
recovery of critical application data. Furthermore, the system’s tight
integration with VMware ensures that if one of Wintek’s servers goes
down, its data will automatically fail over to another server and be
available again in seconds.

While Wintek primarily offers Internet services and Cisco products,
it currently stores two of its customers’ data on the Magnitude 3D 4000
SAN. Wintek expects to extend this storage and business continuity
service to other customers, which will require Wintek to greatly
increase the capacity of its storage infrastructure.

"Business continuity
is essential for all organizations. Yet there is no universal,
one-size-fits-all approach," said Steve Snyder, general manager,
Xiotech Storage Solutions Group. "Our Magnitude 3D 4000 virtual storage
system integrates with our modular data protection and availability
offerings to enable organizations like Wintek to select the best total
solution for their business’s unique requirements."

The Xiotech Magnitude 3D 4000 system also greatly simplifies storage
provisioning and management for Wintek with its intuitive user
interface, ICON Manager. As a result, it is not necessary for Wintek to
dedicate a full-time employee to manage the SAN. For example,
appropriate staff can easily create virtual disks and assign them to
servers with just a few mouse clicks from a single console.

Wintek went live with the Magnitude 3D 4000 storage system in
January. Wintek has moved six servers to the virtual environment, and
plans to move another six servers in the near term, which will give the
company access to 2.4 terabytes of virtualized storage on the SAN.

Xiotech Corporation


Wintek Corporation