DS3 DataVaulting With Data Lifecycle Management

DS3 DataVaulting, a data management solutions provider and the first in North America to manage a petabyte of customer restorable data, announced its Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) solution, giving organizations the ability to backup and restore data based on pre-determined storage and recovery tiers.

Med James, a full service managing general agency and wholesaler of diverse insurance solutions, is able to consistently meet recovery time and cost objectives utilizing the DLM solution.

Traditionally, for backup and restore, organizations have had to rely on bulky and time prohibitive tape systems. With DS3 Data Vaulting’s DLM solution, data is categorized into three tiers: critical (integral to ongoing operations), important (valuable but not mission critical) or archival (required but not typically retrieved). Using traditional tape systems, data is repeatedly backed up during weekly or monthly full backups, even though 70-80 percent of the data has not changed from one backup to the next. This situation makes it difficult for companies to meet backup and restore windows for mission critical data. With DS3’s DLM product, all data is initially backed up online for fast, efficient backup and retrieval, moved to near-line disk-based storage after a period of time based on retention policies and finally transitioned to the offline archive storage tier. This migration of data reflects its declining value over time.

This approach has enabled Med James to meet recovery time objectives that are fully mapped back to storage levels, at a fraction of the typical cost associated with this level of backup and restore. DS3 currently stores more than a terabyte of Med James data in various user-defined tiers, including a large set of documents that have been captured in image format. Previously, backing up this much data required Med James to utilize 2,500+ CDs; in the event of an outage, the company was forced to go through the entire CD set to retrieve even the most critical data, sometimes taking weeks. With DS3, Med James can quickly restore its operational data and be up and running instantaneously while ensuring that less critical data is preserved according to organizational workflow and legal requirements.

“With the DS3 backup process critical data we’re working on today can be back in minutes; important data can be restored within a day or two; and the remainder of the data we’re not currently utilizing can still be back in less than a week,” stated Ed Sitz, IT Manager for Med James. “Simply put, it was a maintenance nightmare before and involved significant personnel, equipment and courier costs. We’ve realized tremendous business continuity and operational improvements by working with DS3.”

“We saw a gaping hole in the traditional backup and restore market that needed to be filled,” stated Stacy Hayes, DS3’s co-founder and President. “By providing this unique tiered approach, DS3’s DLM solution gives organizations full control over their data by focusing on the value of the data at the core. Med James is a prime example of how this works; they dictate what data they need and when and we take care of making sure it’s available based on those specific terms, without breaking the bank.”