The German company e.solutions GmbH had introduced a three tiered storage infrastructure including archiving functionality based on PoINT Storage Manager. The existing expensive primary storage had been extended by cost-efficient secondary storage systems for purging and archiving inactive data. By this storage architecture, implemented by PoINT Storage Manager, e.solutions GmbH could reduce their investments in primary storage extensions and at the same time fulfill the requirements of long-term data archiving.
“We were convinced by the concept of the PoINT solution. By implementing PoINT Storage Manager we could not only reduce our costs for storage extensions considerably but also fulfill our archiving obligations. Especially the easy and homogeneous integration of secondary storage systems into our existing infrastructure without any changes for users nor applications was crucial.“
- Thomas Weber, Head of IT, e.solutions GmbH
Challenges
- Purging of inactive data from primary storage systems (SAN / FC) to capacity-oriented iSCSI cluster based on SATA
- Archiving of project data to disk-based archive storage (WORM)
- Transparent file system access to purged or archived data via primary storage file system
Solution - PoINT Storage Manager
- Implementation of a three tiered storage concept based on PoINT Storage Manager
- Automated purging of inactive data to iSCSI Cluster (SATA) within Tier 2 while retaining access through primary storage
- Archiving including Retention Management to a disk-based archive storage (WORM) by separate “Archive Policies“
- Protection against modification of archived data on file system level
- Automated authentication of archived data by “digital fingerprint“
Advantages
- Efficient usage of primary storage by purging and archiving of inactive data
- All data permanently available by file system access to primary storage
- Decreased backup-volume by offloaded primary storage
- High level of investment protection by storing archived data in standard format
- Future-proof concept by integrated migration functions