United States Air Force Center Selected ONStor’s NAS

ONStor Inc. announced that the United States Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment (AFCEE), a field operating agency of the Air Force Civil Engineer, has chosen the ONStor Bobcat Series NAS gateway as its primary storage system. AFCEE selected the ONStor Bobcat — whose open architecture features heterogeneous virtualization — in order to consolidate data onto a single solution with the flexibility to concurrently utilize multiple vendors’ storage platforms. This allowed the agency to use the same gateway solution to leverage its existing disk storage investment while supporting massive scalability for future growth deploying storage with the agency’s preferred price/performance at any given time.

"We have multiple terabytes of data being accessed by government workers and contractors across the country. I can’t anticipate when new projects are going to be assigned that could require one terabyte of storage or more. This happens sometimes on a weekly or daily basis," says Ralph Miles, network administrator and information systems security officer for Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment. "I need a flexible storage platform and simplified capacity expansion in order for our agency to operate efficiently."

AFCEE Storage Infrastructure Needs: Remote IP Access, Heterogeneous Storage Support, Ease of Use
AFCEE required a storage solution that would integrate the legacy direct attached storage devices already in place in their environment while still allowing for future storage expansion. In addition, remote access across IP was critical. This is because not only are agency personnel located in bases across the country and require remote access to file-based data, AFCEE also has a remote location situated one mile from its data center for backup and disaster recovery operations. Moreover, the agency needed a solution that was intuitive and easy to use, as AFCEE does not have dedicated staff nor budget for storage system management.

ONStor Meets Customer Demands
The ONStor Bobcat clustered NAS gateway solution was able to accommodate the requirements the center had for long term storage and performance while being cost-effective. By utilizing ONStor, AFCEE employees across the country can access the system through IP connections to the Fibre Channel fabric that connects the servers and storage, removing distance limitations normally found with Fibre Channel. By removing the need for a physical file server at each location, the costs of purchasing, managing, and maintaining file storage at remote locations are eliminated.

With 80 percent of personnel data residing on staffers’ personal computers or laptops, data backup is triggered automatically upon VPN login to ensure data continuity. ONStor’s Bobcat supports a broad range of storage arrays, therefore AFCEE was also able to save additional money by purchasing SATA drives versus expensive Fibre Channel and leverage its current infrastructure. In addition, AFCEE is assured constant uptime for the continuity of operations.

"My worthiness is proved by being able to meet the most pressing storage requirements of our agency," says Miles. "With our current infrastructure, I’m confident I can keep our business streamlined while meeting the changing storage needs of our employees — while also being mindful of how taxpayer dollars are spent."