Dr. Martens Deploys Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d NAS

Iomega Corp., an EMC company, announced that Dr. Martens Airwair LLC, shoe purveyor to the young and restless as well as many of the rest of us, has deployed StorCenter desktop NAS servers to take data protection and disaster recovery to the next level while slashing the time and effort required to safeguard a fast-growing virtualized VMware environment.

The UK-based shoe company, a pop culture favorite well known around the globe for its cushioned air sole and fashion-forward designs, relies on Iomega network storage solutions to ensure optimum data availability for 150 employees at its Portland, Oregon-based subsidiary, Dr. Martens Airwair LLC. A five-person IT team chose the StorCenter ix4-200d NAS, a compact four-bay desktop server, after encountering persistent performance problems with tape-based backup and recovery, which was cumbersome, time consuming and unreliable. There was also growing concern on the IT team about the company’s ability to access its VMware environment fast enough in a disaster recovery situation.

Tape Backups Get the Boot from Dr. Martens
According to Shaun Guanco, system administrator for Dr. Martens Airwair LLC, restoring files from tapes could take hours. In some cases, the company was forced to revert to a previous week’s backup, which did not contain the most up-to-date data. As a result, Dr. Martens sought a fast, simple and flexible HDD-based replacement to its legacy tape solution. "We wanted to accelerate overall backups and restores but it had to be straightforward because I’m a ‘one-man show’ with a small team and no time for a big learning curve," he explains. "The new platform also had to be flexible enough to work well in our heavily virtualized environment."

Among Dr. Martens’ selection criteria for a new data backup and recovery installation was the need for straightforward operation that could be handled by anyone on Guanco’s IT team. Guanco also wanted a desktop solution that could be easily removed from the office and taken to an offsite location in the event of a local or regional disaster. To fortify the company’s disaster recovery plan, replication functionality was required so vital files and databases could be copied easily.

Iomega StorCenter Network Storage Devices:
For SMB and Remote Offices
With assistance from reseller PC Connection, Dr. Martens chose Iomega StorCenter ix4d NAS Servers with 12TBs of capacity each and a complement of standard and data storage and protection features. Suited for small businesses and remote offices, the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d offered Dr. Martens network storage with fast data throughput and simple operation for file sharing and backup. The portable desktop system came with a data replication function that made it easy to copy files to and from the device to another NAS device, network share or USB-attached storage system.

The Dr. Martens IT team in the Portland, Oregon offices took advantage of the features of the StorCenter ix4-200d, including multiple RAID configurations and iSCSI block-level access, ensured elevated reliability and flexibility. Thanks to the device’s simple set-up, Guanco had the StorCenter ix4-200d up and running in "four clicks."

Faster Backups & Restores,
Improved Disaster Recovery
Dr. Martens has taken advantage of its Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d units to perform faster, flawless backups. Company files can now be restored in about two minutes, Guanco reports, an improvement over the four or more hours previously required and a reason for celebration among the IT team members and other subsidiary employees. "Backups and recoveries are a dream now," adds Guanco. "I’m able to keep 30 days of data on disk, which means we can respond more efficiently to an employee’s restore requests."

Another plus is the fortified data protection provided by Iomega’s Personal Cloud technology, which enables device-to-device data replication, allowing Dr. Martens to copy backup files from one Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d to another located offsite for data protection.

Dr. Martens also plans to leverage the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d’s reliable performance and iSCSI connectivity to expand its reach within the organization. Additionally, the fact that the StorCenter ix4-200d is VMware certified gives the company an cost-effective replacement for its aging IBM SAN. "The Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d is exactly what I was looking for," concludes Guanco. "This highly functional NAS platform has exceeded my expectations in terms of supporting disk-based backup, recovery and disaster recovery. I’m looking forward to additional uses in the future."

Iomega StorCenter Network Storage Products
Available in double-, quad- and six-bay desktop versions, as well as rackmount array models, Iomega StorCenter network storage products provide solutions to protect, manage and share information for small- to medium-sized businesses, remote offices, and distributed workgroup environments.