Pechanga Resort & Casino Pioneers Data Center and Storage Transformation with EMC

SEATTLE, April 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced that Pechanga Resort & Casino, the largest California casino, owned by the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, deployed EMC Isilon® scale-out NAS as the primary storage repository for the enormous amount of video footage captured by casino-floor video surveillance cameras. Using a cluster of 50 Isilon X200 Platform Nodes running Isilon's SmartLock™, SmartQuotas™, SmartConnect™ and InsightIQ software applications, in combination with VMware server virtualization and EMC backup and recovery solutions, the Pechanga Resort & Casino transformed its existing IT infrastructure into an efficient, flexible, and highly scalable data center.

Customer Benefits:

• IT Transformation – Pechanga Resort & Casino completely transformed its data center by virtualizing its servers with VMware, and deploying next-generation storage and Data Domain from EMC.
• Unified surveillance operations – EMC Isilon enabled Pechanga Resort & Casino to consolidate its coverage and recording products into one entity, easing management and providing a streamlined solution.
• Improved Scalability – With EMC Isilon, Pechanga Resort & Casino can easily scale its storage infrastructure as needed for growing data requirements.
• Streamlined Management – With Isilon and Data Domain, Pechanga streamlined management and simplified its scalable video storage, regulatory compliance and backup of surveillance video.

Customer Challenges and Solution:

The Temecula, California-based Pechanga Resort & Casino features a 200,000 square-foot gaming floor with over 3,000 slot machines. Before deploying EMC Isilon scale-out NAS, Pechanga Resort & Casino had a proprietary surveillance system, attached to casino cameras within the surveillance department. The new integrated infrastructure, part of a complete data center transformation, enabled the Surveillance Department to reduce its data center footprint by 80 percent and significantly cut energy and hardware costs. 

Also owned by the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, Pechanga Technology Solutions Group (PTSG) served as the consulting IT solutions provider for the Resort & Casino. PTSG's experts in data center and advanced network design for the gaming and hospitality industry assessed Pechanga Resort & Casino's video surveillance system and data center infrastructure with an eye toward managing Big Data in the most efficient, cost-effective, easily-scalable way.

In the new data center, digital footage captured by the video surveillance cameras is encoded and then transmitted over a 10 GB Cisco IP network. A video management system hosted on VMware virtualized servers with Cisco UCS writes encoded footage to the cluster of EMC Isilon X200 nodes, an ideal scale-out solution for constantly changing virtual environments, guaranteeing storage capacity where it is needed. The completed storage infrastructure delivers 1.4 petabytes of usable storage. When an incident happens at the casino, the footage is pulled from the X200 Nodes, moved to WORM-compliant storage and is automatically backed up on an EMC Data Domain DD860 deduplication storage system, providing fast and reliable backup and recovery. The ease-of-use of the Isilon OneFS operating system has freed up team members to work on other areas of the infrastructure.

Customer Quotes:

Anthony Borges, Director of Surveillance, Pechanga Gaming Commission
"In our industry, because of the enormous amount of digital surveillance footage, updating a data center is a major undertaking. EMC Isilon enabled us to transform our operations, creating an integrated and end-to-end solution, with best-of-breed virtualization, scale-out NAS, and backup products."  

"Our primary purpose is to protect Tribal assets and ensure the safety and protection of our guests and employees. For the first time, our coverage and recording products will work together as one entity.  This is an exciting and new era for our operations and the industry overall."

John Kenefick, vice president of IT, Pechanga Resort & Casino
"For us, ensuring gaming at the Pechanga Resort & Casino is conducted honestly, competitively, and free of criminal and corruptive elements is paramount.  We have video surveillance cameras deployed all around the gaming floor and casino property, producing hundreds of hours of video daily, making storing and managing the footage a real IT challenge."              

Michael Grimsley, director of systems, Pechanga Technology Solutions Group
"It was clear that in order to stay ahead of business growth demands, the Surveillance Department needed to change the existing infrastructure. We recommended a data center overhaul with EMC Isilon scale-out NAS alongside VMware server virtualization, and EMC Data Domain and Networker as the backup solution. These technologies, alongside a new Cisco Nexus network infrastructure, proactively address camera and data growth, streamline management, and allow for simple and scalable video storage, regulatory compliance, and backup of surveillance video."

Isilon Quote:

Sam Grocott, vice president of marketing, EMC Isilon
"Pechanga Resort & Casino is pioneering new best practices for the gaming industry. Their data center transformation represents a significant move away from the proprietary, expensive video surveillance systems widely used today. This new way of managing digital footage makes sense not just for other casinos, but for many other types of organizations that create and manage big data."  

About Isilon

Isilon, a division of EMC, is the global leader in scale-out NAS. We deliver powerful yet simple solutions for enterprises that want to manage their data, not their storage. Isilon's products are simple to install, manage and scale, at any size. And, unlike traditional enterprise storage, Isilon stays simple no matter how much storage is added, how much performance is required or how business needs change in the future. We're challenging enterprises to think differently about their storage, because when they do, they'll recognize there's a better, simpler way. Learn what we mean at http://www.isilon.com.

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, Isilon, OneFS, SmartLock, SmartConnect, SmartQuotas, Data Domain, and Networker are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined under the Federal Securities Laws.  Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iii) the relative and varying rates of product price and component cost declines and the volume and mixture of product and services revenues; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures and new product introductions; (v) component and product quality and availability; (vi) fluctuations in VMware, Inc.'s operating results and risks associated with trading of VMware stock; (vii) the transition to new products, the uncertainty of customer acceptance of new product offerings and rapid technological and market change; (viii) risks associated with managing the growth of our business, including risks associated with acquisitions and investments and the challenges and costs of integration, restructuring and achieving anticipated synergies; (ix) the ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (x) insufficient, excess or obsolete inventory; (xi) fluctuating currency exchange rates; (xii) threats and other disruptions to our secure data centers or networks; (xiii) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (xiv) war or acts of terrorism; and (xv) other one-time events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in EMC's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  EMC disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

SOURCE EMC Corporation