University of St. Gallen Acquires Quantum DXi7500

Quantum Corp. announced that the University of St. Gallen has overhauled its data retention and management strategy, utilizing a Quantum DXi7500 Enterprise disk-based backup system with deduplication. With the new system, the renowned Swiss graduate school of business, economics, law and social sciences has achieved a 95 percent reduction in needed storage capacity, faster data backup and recovery, seamless integration between the DXi7500 and Symantec NetBackup, and improved scalability for future data growth.

In recent years the university has faced skyrocketing student enrollments, a massive increase in email traffic and a growing number of research projects, all of which have contributed greatly to the amount of data produced. This additional data had become too much for the university’s legacy tape library and disk subsystems.

To address this problem, the university chose Quantum’s DXi7500 with 27 TB of usable capacity, paired with a Quantum Scalar i500 tape library for longer-term data retention. Key factors cited by the university in its DXi7500 decision include the solution’s cost efficiency, ease of integration and management, proven track record and scalability. The backup and deduplication system also scored well in terms of price, and the university was impressed with the level of customer support offered by Quantum and its channel partner, ITRIS, throughout the evaluation and implementation process.

Since deploying the DXi7500 the university has been very pleased with the results. The university’s IT team estimates that without deduplication its current storage requirements would amount to roughly 193 TB instead of the 6.6 TB needed today. Thus, the university has reduced its storage capacity needs by more than 95 percent with a deduplication ratio of nearly 30:1. The IT team also likes the seamless integration with Symantec NetBackup, the direct path to the Scalar i500 tape library, the easy scalability, and reporting capabilities which provide graphical information and statistical diagrams on activities such as deduplication operations and disk load reduction.

"This was our chance to reassess the infrastructure that had grown over the years and to eliminate any bottlenecks," said Kurt Staedler, Head of Systems Technology at the University of St. Gallen. "We actually save time now, and our capacities are more than sufficient for future growth. I can definitely recommend Quantum and the DXi7500."

More information on the University of St. Gallen implementation