Rust Consulting Ensures Backup and Recovery With Quantum De-Dup Solution

Quantum Corp. announced Rust Consulting has significantly
accelerated backup and recovery processes by implementing Quantum’s
DXi disk backup and replication appliances with data de-duplication
technology. Deploying two DXi5500 appliances, Rust Consulting cut its
backup times by 66 percent, improved restore times from a day to less
than 20 minutes, and reduced disk capacity by 90 percent compared to
conventional disk storage.

“Quantum’s DXi-Series gives us the
time to do a lot of other things like get a good night’s sleep or
actually update our servers,” said Tim Holtan, systems analyst for Rust
Consulting. “We now have a maintenance window instead of having to sit
there waiting for our backups to finish.”

Headquartered in downtown Minneapolis, Rust Consulting is a
500-employee firm providing third-party class action lawsuit claims
processing. The company’s backup needs are quite different than most
firms. In addition to the usual email, database and document files, 30 to 40 percent of its data consists of small TIF files containing images of claims forms.

“Architecting
a solution for hundreds of different styles of backup was one of our
biggest challenges,” said Eric Christensen, senior systems
administrator for Rust Consulting. “The primary goals were to get our
backups completed within the established windows and to speed up file
recovery.”

The old backup system sent data from a single media
server to a small SCSI-attached tape library. The system was too slow
to keep up with a 40 percent annual rate of data growth, and there was
never enough time to clone tapes for archiving. Once data was moved
off-site for disaster recovery protection, a daily ritual for the
company, all file restores came from off-site copies.

Rust Consulting considered moving to newer tape technology, but at the
suggestion of its value-added reseller, Rust investigated Quantum’s DXi
disk backup systems with data de-duplication to augment tape resources.
Data de-duplication technology allows users to reduce the amount of
disk storage needed for backups, allowing companies to use disk to
retain data locally for fast restores as well as increase backup
performance.

Quantum’s consultative approach helped Rust in
its final decision to purchase two DXi5500 disk backup systems. The
Quantum systems were configured with both a Fibre Channel virtual tape
library interface and a NAS interface with multiple streams being
written to each unit simultaneously.

The
DXi solution has been so effective that Rust Consulting is planning to
buy another set of DXi5500s for the company’s collocation facility.
These units would act as a target for replication and disaster recovery
with data coming both from the data center and, eventually, from
smaller satellite offices.

Rust Consulting


Quantum
Corp.