Swiss-Based IT Forensic Services Provider Chooses Qsan

Company
This client is a provider of eDiscovery, IT forensics, and information governance services for enterprises, law firms, and government agencies. Its staff offers case management for legal investigations and litigations into such issues as fraud, regulatory compliance breaches, and data and intellectual property theft, as well as consulting for information governance. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Switzerland, it also has an office in Singapore for both national and international projects. It was selected Global Investigation Review as one of the leading corporate investigations firm in Switzerland.

Challenge
This client requires an IT infrastructure that enables its staff to collect, store, search, and retrieve large volumes of information quickly. For eDiscovery and forensic investigations, for example, it must save unstructured data like email, Word documents, and a variety of other files it receives from clients. Staff collects metadata from the files, which they store in a SQL database, enabling them to search for needed documents. They then retrieve the native documents for their work.

To conduct data-intensive investigations on large troves of files, this client relies on tools like the Relativity eDiscovery platform, an information management system from Nuix Pty Ltd, and the EnCase Forensic digital investigation solution.

“The core of our work is processing and analyzing clients’ data, and our applications, particularly SQL databases, demand high-speed storage to operate efficiently,” said the specialist in computer forensics. “Our storage also must be very dependable to ensure there’s never any data loss as well as capable to support the data growth in the next couple of years”

Solution

• IT infrastructure
• High speed

QSAN XCubeSAN 5226D was deployed with 10GbE iSCSI and SSDs, each with 2TB of capacity. The device had multiple connections to 2 low-latency Mellanox MSX1012 half-width switches via redundant 10GbE iSCSI connections. This device has been performed flawlessly for years and Western Digital Ultrastar Data60 JBOD was attached as expansion unit to achieve the total raw capacity of petabyte.   

Benefits
By deploying a XCubeSAN 5226D, this client greatly the collection, processing, and discovery that comprise its eDiscovery and digital forensic investigations. The QSAN storage system enables complex queries to be run concurrently even on thousands of files for large, complex projects. The platform is engineered for continuous operation and features dual active controllers, redundant components, and no single point of failure.

Additionally, the XCubeSAN solution offers scalability. With Western Digital Ultrastar JBODs as expansion units, the chassis can expand up to 6PB of capacity, ensuring the client of abundant primary storage well into the future.

The QSAN XS5226D also offers functionality like thin provisioning, auto tiering, snapshots, and local clone and remote replication for disaster recovery, all of which are easily accessed in the system’s SANOS 4.0 OS via a web browser.

“QSAN platforms offer complete storage solutions. We might leverage the snapshot feature, for example, if we deploy backup storage at a remote data center. QSAN storage solutions have more than kept pace with today’s storage needs,” concluded this specialist. “They provide outstanding value and have proven to be a great investment for us.“

• Recommended Product: XCubeSAN 5200
• Recommended Models: XS5226