Brocade StorageX at Camden Property Trust

Brocade announced that Camden
Property Trust, one of the nation’s largest real estate investment trusts, is
using Brocade StorageX and the product’s file virtualization capabilities
to aggregate and automate the management of mission-critical file data
generated at its seven remote offices. The Brocade StorageX file data
management software eliminates the costs and time required to maintain tape
backup systems at remote offices, and is designed to help ensure that the firm
meets Sarbanes-Oxley regulations mandating the safekeeping of key business
information.

With nearly 200 communities across the U.S. encompassing 70,000 apartment
homes, Camden clearly requires effective data backup. The 2,000-employee
enterprise, founded in 1982, must preserve files and records, including images
of properties, blueprints, leases, and financial and HR data, which it uses to
invest in, develop, and operate properties in 13 states. The Houston-based
firm must also secure e-mail and other data as required by Sarbanes-Oxley.

"Brocade StorageX is an easy, very cost-effective strategy for efficiently
managing file data across distributed sites," said Charles Collins, Network
Administrator, Camden Property Trust. "By consolidating file data daily at our
data center without manual intervention, we did away with tape solutions at
every remote office and the hours employees spent every week to operate them.
There’s now a single point of ownership for our stored files and we control
all of it centrally. By working seamlessly with our Brocade SAN switches,
Brocade StorageX provides a superior backup and disaster recovery solution,
ensuring the safety of our business data and regulatory compliance."

Camden’s need for a more effective backup strategy stemmed from the costs
and complexity of its prior approach. Previously, staff at the firm’s remote
offices backed up approximately 30 gigabytes of locally created data onto
tapes each week, mailed the tapes to the firm’s data center, and inserted new
tapes into the remote office backup systems. The process required up to three
hours weekly at each facility and, because most sites lacked skilled IT
professionals, the process was subject to error.

"We needed a much more secure means to protect the data produced in our
field offices along with a more efficient and reliable method of backing up
that data," said Collins. "Using Brocade StorageX now allows Camden’s
employees more time to focus on day-to-day operations."

Camden deployed Brocade StorageX to remedy this situation. The Brocade
solution is an integrated application suite featuring multiple file data
management capabilities, including migration and consolidation, business
continuity, remote site data management, Information Lifecycle Management
(ILM), storage optimization, and data classification and reporting. Camden
administrators configured the solution’s replication policies to automate the
daily replication of data from each distributed facility across Camden’s Wide
Area Network (WAN) to its data center in Houston, Texas. The replication and
corresponding backups are performed at night to leverage the firm’s WAN during
times of low traffic volumes.

At the data center, the firm uses two Brocade SAN switches to distribute
the data to storage systems containing approximately four terabytes of
information.

"Brocade StorageX improved our productivity by eliminating the need to
ship and handle tapes or own, operate, and troubleshoot remote tape
libraries," concluded Collins. "We easily administered the solution to
automate and consolidate backups to our precise needs, reducing our
administrative burden while enhancing the reliability, availability, and
safety of our crucial data. Brocade StorageX is an ideal solution for Camden,
and it has significantly lowered the costs, headaches, and uncertainty of
remote site data management."

Brocade

Camden Property Trust