Advertising Firm Deutsch Leverages Dot Hill AssuredSAN Arrays

Dot Hill Systems Corp. announced that advertising firm Deutsch Inc. is leveraging its AssuredSAN storage arrays as part of a digital asset management system with coast-to-coast data replication, supporting DR and BC while preserving network performance vital to ongoing creative work and administration.

Deutsch is renowned in the advertising industry for its results-oriented campaigns for blue-chip clients such as: Johnson & Johnson, Volkswagen, Taco Bell, Microsoft, Netflix and PNC Bank. In 2014 it was named one of the world’s top 10 most innovative companies in advertising by Fast Company and to the ‘A-List’ of Stand Out Agencies by Advertising Age. With offices in Los Angeles and New York, it specializes in digital, design, media planning and buying, direct, search, PR, communications planning, eCRM, experiential and data analytics.

Today’s advertising pros are akin to data scientists, compiling data to construct a sophisticated understanding of customer demographics and behavioral characteristics to anchor their creative efforts. As such, they need proven storage solutions to manage and preserve digital assets and data, particularly as the advertising epicenters of NYC and Los Angeles lay subject to manmade and natural disasters.

“When we attempted to use a competing storage solution, we experienced a tremendous performance hit when we tried to replicate our data from site to site that was completely unacceptable,” said Tripp McCune, EVP and CIO, Deutsch. “We are really impressed that the Dot Hill AssuredSAN solution is able to accommodate our data replication and deliver the performance and support needed at a price point that’s very affordable.“

By leveraging two AssuredSAN arrays, JBODs and AssuredRemote replication software, Deutsch now has a DR solution in place for bi-directional site-to-site replication, offering a total of 240TB of storage. The AssuredSAN 3920 features both 8Gb FC and 1GbE iSCSI in one hybrid array; this enables Deutsch to leverage the benefits of FC for local data management and iSCSI for cost-effective, long-distance replication. Dot Hill AssuredSnap takes volume snapshots, creating point-in-time backups that can be used to restore data in the event of a system failure. AssuredCopy protects against disk failures. The solution was introduced to Deutsch by reseller NAPC.

Despite the challenge of low-bandwidth links, which are a common occurrence in SMB data centers, the AssuredSAN 3920’s block-level replication is providing Deutsch with the data protection and network performance it needs. The solution enables approximately 300GB/day of block changes to be captured via snapshots and sent overnight, with minimal performance degradation during the work day.

“We’re really pleased to be working with Deutsch, one of the most respected and successful advertising agencies in the country,” said Jim Jonez, senior director of marketing, Dot Hill. “Data and creative assets are the lifeblood of the advertising industry and firms can ill afford to operate without the requisite data protection or compromise their day-to-day network performance. Our Assured SAN 3920, equipped with AssuredRemote remote replication software, provides the easiest array-to-array remote replication solution on the market today. Now Deutsch has DR protection and BC, yet won’t be impeded in day-to-day operations focused on delivering the ‘wow factor’ to clients.“