Santa Barbara City College Turns To Quantum To Meet VM Protection Challenge

School Slashes VM Backup and Restore Times by 90% with vmPRO and DXi

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Quantum Corp.

Oct 21, 2014, 04:05 ET

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Quantum Corp. (NYSE: QTM) today announced that Santa Barbara City College has reduced time spent on virtual machine (VM) backup and restores by 90 percent following deployment of vmPRO™ software and DXi®-Series deduplication to protect the school's VM data. By instituting a new backup workflow to manage data growth and cut its reliance on disk storage, the college has opened the door for more strategic projects.

Addressing Backup and Restore Performance Challenges
Protecting its fast-growing student and administrative data is a primary mission of the Santa Barbara City College IT department. After implementing VMware to virtualize its server environment, the data protection challenge became more complex and expensive. The college used NetBackup to protect its physical servers, writing data to tape, but needed a different approach for virtual machines. Full weekly backups took more than two days to complete, and the system performance did not allow effective daily incremental backups, so some data was not getting protected each day. Restores were also a major bottleneck.

The IT team looked at a range of alternatives to solve the problems and still provide good VM protection within budget. The team needed a way to provide offsite protection and wanted assurance that its supplier had the experience to provide long-term support. The college selected a Quantum solution consisting of vmPRO data protection software and a pair of DXi deduplication appliances.

Reduces Backup Window by 90 Percent – Restores in Minutes
VMs are now backed up by vmPRO software and written directly to a DXi appliance in the school's main data center. The physical servers are still backed up by NetBackup, but they are now written directly to disk, to a second share in the same DXi. The backups are also replicated to a second DXi appliance located in a remote data center to provide a copy for offsite DR protection. The advantages of the new system are clear.

Weekly backups that once took up to three days to complete now finish in as little as four hours—a 90 percent reduction in the college's backup window. Previously, holding backup data on disk in the original system was simply too expensive. Today, with the DXi's patented variable-length deduplication, a full six-month retention cycle can be cost effectively accomplished within the college's tight budget. Offsite protection is also handled with more efficient use of network bandwidth; each day the primary DXi automatically replicates backup changes to the second unit.

Further, because vmPRO creates copies of VMs in their native format and reduces the size of VM images before they are backed up, file-level access is greatly accelerated. As a result, the IT team can restore or boot VMs quickly without a separate backup application, cutting virtual server and network use.

With backup and restore successfully streamlined, the IT team can now focus on its next big project—desktop virtualization.

Supporting Quotes

  • Brandon Lovelace, Network Administrator, Santa Barbara City College: "Weekly backups now all finish in four to six hours—so we've seen a 90 percent reduction in our backup window. And the vmPRO software tracks and snaps just the changed blocks within the VMs, letting us finally do daily incrementals for all of the VMs, which gives us better, more frequent protection. It's just a better approach—it's the way VMs should be backed up."
  • Robert Clark, Senior Vice President, Product Operations, Quantum: "By reinventing its backup workflow, Santa Barbara City College provides a striking example of how to solve the challenge of protecting virtual environments, leveraging Quantum technology to take a more strategic approach to data protection."

Additional Resources

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About Quantum
Quantum is a leading expert in scale-out storage, archive and data protection, providing solutions for capturing, sharing and preserving digital assets over the entire data lifecycle. From small businesses to major enterprises, more than 100,000 customers have trusted Quantum to address their most demanding data workflow challenges. With Quantum, customers can Be Certain™ they have the end-to-end storage foundation to maximize the value of their data by making it accessible whenever and wherever needed, retaining it indefinitely and reducing total cost and complexity. See how at www.quantum.com/customerstories.

Quantum, the Quantum logo, Be Certain, vmPRO and DXi are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Quantum Corporation and its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

"Safe Harbor" Statement: This press release contains "forward-looking" statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Specifically, but without limitation, statements relating to 1) benefits to customers from using DXi appliances and vmPRO software and 2) customer demand for and Quantum's future revenue from such appliances and software, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to Quantum on the date hereof. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Quantum's actual results to differ materially from those implied by the forward-looking statements. More detailed information about these risk factors are set forth in Quantum's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, those risks and uncertainties listed in the section entitled "Risk Factors," in Quantum's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 8, 2014 and in Quantum's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 6, 2014. Quantum expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

Contact:
Bob Wientzen
Public Relations
Quantum Corp.
(720) 406-5667
[email protected]

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