Grand Valley State University Graduates to First-Class Data Protection with Overland Storage's SAN, Backup Appliance and Tape Solutions
Overland Storage Inc. announced that Grand Valley State University
has deployed an economical multi-tiered data protection strategy
utilizing Overland's ULTAMUS(TM) RAID high-density SAN storage, REO
SERIES® disk-based backup and recovery appliances as well as NEO
SERIES® tape libraries. The integrated, scalable platform seamlessly
safeguards 10 TBs of mission-critical data while enabling the
university to better support a rapidly expanding VMware virtualization
environment.
Grand Valley
State is a public, four-year college located in Allendale, Michigan.
Situated near Grand Rapids, the university supports more than 24,000
students along with a faculty and support staff of almost 2,000 people.
The Princeton Review named GVSU one of the best universities in
the Midwest in 2009 and its Seidman College of Business is known as one
of the country's top business schools.
An
IT team of 40 ensures that students and faculty have ubiquitous network
access and the latest tools to enrich the educational process,
including SunGard's Banner Unified Digital Campus administrative
software. The technology staff also oversees 250 Microsoft Windows file
servers, nearly 100 VMware virtual servers and 10 TBs of vital data. A
constant influx of data along with a steady migration to server
virtualization strained the university's tape-based backup
infrastructure, prompting Grand Valley to explore the addition of a
cost-effective yet powerful disk-based appliance to bolster data
protection.
In seeking
reliable, scalable backup and recovery products to support its rapidly
expanding environment, Grand Valley turned to trusted reseller partner,
Mercury Storage,
a Southfield, Michigan-based provider of best-of-breed data storage and
security solutions. After evaluating products from several leading
manufacturers, the university selected a suite of end-to-end data
protection solutions from Overland Storage, including its high-capacity
ULTAMUS RAID 1200 storage arrays, top-of-the-line REO 9100c disk-based
backup appliances with hardware compression and enterprise-class NEO
8000 tape libraries. Together, this complementary blend of products has
enabled Grand Valley State to accelerate backups and restores, extend
long-term data retention and achieve heightened levels of disaster
recovery and business continuity.
"With
Overland's SAN products, back up appliances and tape solutions, I no
longer worry about backups or keeping up with spikes in data growth,"
said David Reed, network engineer for Grand Valley State University.
"When our continued growth requires additional solutions, we'll look at
Overland first because we've come to trust their products over the
years since they've always performed well and we're confident the next
one will too."
Grand
Valley first took advantage of two NEO 8000 tape libraries for
enterprise-class performance and capacity with access to as much as 1.6
petabytes of storage and space for up to 1,000 cartridges and 24 tape
drives. Next, the university opted for a pair of high-end REO 9100
disk-based backup appliances to accelerate backups by more than 75
percent while enabling near-instantaneous data recoveries.
The
team then added compression cards to their high-end REOs to nearly
double the useable virtual tape capacity in order to keep pace with
constant data growth. Two ULTAMUS SAN storage solutions complete the
data protection picture by offering massive amounts of storage at the
best possible price point to accommodate the university's VMware
backups.
According to
Jillian Mansolf, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for
Overland Storage, the company's family of backup appliances, highly
available SAN and NAS solutions and tape products scale easily to
support demanding requirements. "Our future-proof data protection
solutions are flexible and well suited for rapid-growth environments,"
she explains. "Grand Valley State University is an excellent example of
how Overland's product portfolio delivers complementary capabilities
for achieving faster backups and restores, more reliable long-term data
retention and increased support for server virtualization migrations."