Appleby Global and Cross Country Home Services Deploying Compellent

To control costs while maintaining around-the-clock data availability, enterprises are leveraging intelligent, virtualized storage applications to build efficient, cost-effective disaster recovery infrastructures. The combination of virtualization technologies such as thin replication and automated tiered storage have enabled Compellent Technologies, Inc.‘s customers such as Appleby Global and Cross Country Home Services, Inc. to increase storage efficiency, automate data movement and optimize their network infrastructure.

The Compellent disaster recovery solution makes it attractive for enterprises of all sizes. 70 percent of Compellent customers use replication to protect their data. Using the Compellent boot from SAN and continuous snapshot features, administrators can create space-efficient copies to set up, recover and allocate any size volume to any server in seconds. Customers can also replicate an unlimited number of snapshots between sites and perform live tests of the replication, allowing multiple locations to serve as instant recovery points. Customers can combine these DR features with thin provisioning and automated tiered storage to further increase utilization and save on storage capital and operating expense at their sites.

"Compellent customers are running 24/7 IT operations and cannot afford to have unplanned downtime," said Scott Horst, vice president of corporate marketing, Compellent. "Compellent offers an easy-to-manage, scalable disaster recovery storage infrastructure, allowing IT managers to build reliable cloud and end-to-end virtualized environments while maintaining data resiliency and availability."

Replication Goes Worldwide for Appleby Global
Protecting the work of more than 800 lawyers and financial professionals supporting a global client base of financial institutions and high-net-worth individuals is a top priority for Appleby Global.The team at Appleby Global worked with Compellent channel partner MCS Ltd to implement Compellent Fluid Data storage to connect a Jersey backup site with global offices in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands. Appleby relies on Compellent storage to provide rapid data recovery instantaneously without manual management. To jumpstart initial site synchronization, Appleby used Portable Volume, a set of enterprise-class external hard drives preconfigured for use with Compellent storage, at new data center locations without the need for dedicated high-speed data links or duplicate arrays. After the initial synchronization, thin replication only replicates changed data, minimizing bandwidth requirements and speeding data recovery.

"Compellent allowed us to integrate an easy-to-use replication strategy into our disaster recovery plan," said Jack Fleming, group IT infrastructure manager at Appleby Global. "We appreciate the lower cost of Compellent’s thin replication, and also the flexibility offered by the system that allows us to use complementary technologies like Riverbed bandwidth optimization to tailor our disaster recovery approach. With several locations in hurricane-prone areas of the world, we can trust our Compellent setup to protect our data during natural disasters."

Virtualized Infrastructure Connects
Cross Country Home Services Across Real State Lines
Cross Country Home Services, Inc., a home warranty, services and emergency assistance company, supports 600 associates, more than 200 corporate clients, and upwards of 10 million customers with an IT staff of only 33. Looking to optimize their VMware investment, the team worked with Compellent reseller Syscom Technologies to revamp its disaster recovery strategy. Cross Country Home Services is utilizing Compellent Fluid Data storage to reliably store and recover data, citing automated tiering, snapshots, and replication capabilities as primary reasons for selecting Compellent. Moving from a tape-based backup strategy, Cross Country now uses space-efficient snapshots on the Compellent SAN with VMware to quickly recover virtual machines on different physical servers in the event of a loss, as well as active off-site replication to maintain business continuity.

"Each of our three sites, located in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, replicate to at least one other site, allowing users to immediately operate off a back-up Compellent SAN when necessary," said Chuck Matulik, senior manager of network systems and telecom, Cross Country Home Services. "Since the drive and connection types don’t have to mirror the primary SAN, the whole replication process is easy to set up and manage. And thanks to Compellent’s seamless integration with VMware, we can recover data within the dynamic pool of storage that is shared by our virtual machines across these sites quickly and painlessly."

Bernard Westwood, CFO at Syscom Technologies said: "Customers like Cross Country Home Services rely on us to deliver the most appropriate technology solution to meet their businesses continuity needs. The Compellent Fluid Data enterprise storage system, with its built-in automation and intelligence, allows data to be easily stored, managed and protected in a way that is directly aligned with the needs of any organization, making it a perfect fit for our business model."