EMC VPLEX Enables Major Law Firm to Migrate 250 Live Systems and Data in 15 to 20 Seconds with Zero Downtime

HOPKINTON, Mass., July 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced that Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, a Chicago-based law firm with 600 attorneys, has standardized on EMC technologies and deployed EMC® VPLEX® virtual storage technology to transform to an active/active data center.  Active/Active data centers enable customers to seamlessly pool two data centers together to enable mobility, availability and collaboration for their data without disruption. This new approach enables Katten to move the processing and storage of running Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange and other mission critical enterprise applications across data centers. Katten relies on VPLEX to relocate data and applications between data centers resulting in zero downtime and minimal engineering resources, dramatically faster delivery of IT resources, and affordable enterprise-class business continuity.

Customer Benefits:

• Improved Availability—VPLEX enabled Katten to migrate 250 live systems and 150 terabytes of data to a new data center location 25 miles away in 15 seconds and with zero downtime—a sharp contrast to the full week of downtime and one third more staff to achieve the same prior to EMC VPLEX.
• Business Agility —Katten is now able to respond quickly to business demands by delivering IT services to support new applications in 40 minutes compared to several weeks in its previous IT environment.
• Increased Efficiency—Katten has increased utilization of resources and performs maintenance and upgrades without downtime while employing an enterprise-class mission critical business continuity.

Customer Challenges and Solution:

As Katten moved and expanded its data centers to address the company's growth, its IT staff was consumed with planning and executing data migrations that involved hundreds of systems and would have required extended downtime—up to a full week for certain systems. Not only would these events disrupt their attorneys' ability to serve clients, but it would have also diminished IT's ability to respond to fast-changing business requirements.

To significantly improve data protection and business agility, Katten deployed EMC VPLEX Metro in its production data center and a disaster recovery facility. Katten also leverages VPLEX to create a true active/active data center, which balanced workloads across multiple sites for optimal resource utilization and delivers new IT services faster and more efficiently.

Katten runs a full suite of enterprise applications, including Microsoft SQL Server stretch clusters and Exchange, as well as 200 VMware® virtual machines. Approximately 85-90% of its infrastructure is virtualized with VMware vSphere™, with VMware vSphere vMotion™ to move live virtual machines between its two data centers.

Customer Quotes:

Alexander Diaz, Enterprise Development Manager, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP

"For a major data center migration, we were able to move a running virtual machine across our cloud to the new data center 25 miles away in about 15 to 20 seconds with VPLEX and vMotion.  With VPLEX's capabilities, I have confidence that we could move the data across an even further distances should our data center needs evolve over time.

"VPLEX kept the storage in synch in both data centers.  Four engineers moved 30 to 40 virtual machines the first weekend and then gradually moved over 250 systems during the next three weeks. The servers stayed up the whole time and no one in the firm knew that we had migrated our entire data center.  The 'old' way would have meant days or up to a week of downtime for certain systems and a dozen engineers working around the clock.

"VPLEX has allowed us to raise the bar and provide our firm with enterprise-class business continuity—and a truly active/active data center model.  Using the VPLEX for our virtual machines and stretch clusters, we can do maintenance and upgrades on hardware whenever it's needed without any downtime. We're also getting more utilization out of our infrastructure by balancing workloads across multiple sites.

"When someone in the firm needs a new application, we're expected to respond quickly. EMC technologies along with virtualization enable us to bring up a new system in about 40 minutes—start to finish. Before, it would take weeks. Sometimes our users think it is magic, so you could say VPLEX gave us a special wand to get the job done."

About EMC VPLEX

EMC VPLEX is a unique virtual storage technology that enables information in the cloud, public, private or hybrid, to be shared, accessed and moved within, across and between data centers, federating various storage systems into a single resource. Customers can achieve transparent workload mobility and availability, both locally and over distance, through VPLEX's simultaneous access to storage systems at geographically separate sites.

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about EMC VPLEX
• Connect with EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and ECN  

About EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing.  Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

EMC and VPLEX are registered trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE EMC Corporation