Yellow Pages Publisher Dials up Tegile Systems to Power Virtualization and SAN Upgrades

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. and NEWARK, Calif., April 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- US-Yellow (http://us-yellow.com) is an independent yellow page publisher with consumers referring to Yellow Pages more than 15 billion times a year, with Yellow Pages a strong revenue producer in addition to the company's online and CD directory products. US-Yellow is a top resource for finding information online, in addition to its print directory and directory on CD.

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US-Yellow operates a database-heavy IT infrastructure with multiple large SQL databases as well as Microsoft Exchange, PostgreSQL, and custom SAP applications. It recently undertook a major IT upgrade, adopting server and desktop virtualization platforms for the first time and making the transition from local server-attached storage to a high-availability Storage Area Network.

Ben Croxton, IT Director at US-Yellow, was well aware of the storage challenges of a virtualized environment, such as the I/O blender effect of server virtualization and the extreme I/O demands of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure deployment. To mitigate the I/O challenges of a virtualized infrastructure, Croxton sought out a flash-assisted storage solution but was frustrated by what he found.

"I was looking for SAN storage that I felt comfortable using both for production servers and VDI at the same time," he said. "But after speaking to several larger vendors I realized they either did not have an applicable solution, or their solution was far beyond my price range."

Croxton narrowed his choice down to commercial SSD-hard disk hybrid arrays from Nimble Storage and Tegile Systems (www.tegile.com). The decision was an easy one, he said, with Tegile offering better hardware, better pricing, more storage capacity (Tegile Zebi arrays boast almost a 4x flash capacity advantage per array compared to Nimble), and an honest, up-front sales process with excellent customer service.

Tegile's Zebi arrays bring a new approach to high-performance network storage with an innovative hybrid design that leverages the high performance of SSDs and the low cost-per-terabyte of capacity hard disk drives. The Tegile storage array delivers up to seven times the performance and up to 70% less capacity than legacy arrays. And unlike legacy arrays where any additional storage services require additional license fees, everything needed is built into the Zebi arrays, with a full range of storage services, including backup snapshots, remote replication, inline compression and data deduplication, application optimized templates for fast and easy storage provisioning and one-click deployment of virtual machines and virtual desktops.

For US-Yellow, the virtualization support radically simplified and accelerated the usually complex and time-consuming task of provisioning 7 VMware ESXi physical hosts, about 24 servers and 30 virtual desktops. Not surprisingly, the inline data deduplication functionality that is built into the Zebi array has made a major impact in reducing the storage capacity required for the operating system volumes.

Along with the Zebi hybrid array, US-Yellow installed a complete iSCSI SAN at its Jacksonville headquarters. The Zebi array with 22 TB of raw storage is attached via 4 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections to redundant network switches which then use multiple GigE connections to seven VMware ESXi hosts. US-Yellow also has VDI users running VMware View 5 – adding further stress to the network storage. But Croxton said the Zebi hybrid array has handled the server and desktop virtualization load without a hitch.

Croxton also had praise for the unified storage functionality of the Tegile array. After its initial deployment with block storage in the iSCSI SAN, US-Yellow is planning to install additional Zebi arrays to handle the file storage requirements, replacing disk-based Network Attached Storage arrays it currently uses for backup and disaster recovery.

About Tegile Systems
Tegile Systems is pioneering a new generation of enterprise storage arrays that balance performance, capacity, features and price for virtualization, file services and database applications. With Tegile's Zebi line of hybrid storage arrays, the company is redefining the traditional approach to storage by providing a family of arrays that is significantly faster than all hard disk-based arrays and significantly less expensive than all solid-state disk-based arrays.

Tegile's patent-pending MASS technology accelerates the Zebi's performance and enables on-the-fly de-duplication and compression of data so each Zebi has a usable capacity far greater than its raw capacity. Tegile's award-winning technology solutions enable customers to better address the requirements of server virtualization, virtual desktop integration and database integration than other offerings. Featuring both NAS and SAN connectivity, Tegile arrays are easy-to-use, fully redundant, and highly scalable. They come complete with built-in auto-snapshot, auto-replication, near-instant recovery, onsite or offsite failover, and virtualization management features. Additional information is available at www.tegile.com. Follow Tegile on Twitter @tegile.

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SOURCE Tegile Systems