ITT Dublin choose Origina to implement a Storage Management

solution

Introduction:

Origina reduced ITT Dublin storage costs through a storage management solution using IBM TotalStorage Productivity Centre (TPC) for data.

Project Summary:

ITT Dublin is one of Ireland's leading independent third level institutions. Founded in 1992, it offers a 15,000 square meter campus to its 5,000 students. Like all third level institutions nowadays, ITT Dublin are focused on offering a best-of-breed IT infrastructure to their students while keeping costs under control and working on limited budgets.

Origina have been supporting their IT environment for the last few years especially around the storage and data management areas. Origina have recently implemented a first-of-its-kind solution in Ireland, based on IBM TotalStorage Productivity Centre (TPC) for Data, to help ITT Dublin reduce their storage costs. This solution allows ITT Dublin to view their stored data at a granular level, bringing their growing file and print data under control and paving the way for a Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) solution.

The Challenges / Issues:

ITT Dublin was faced with a growing quantity of file data, increasing substantially over the years to nearly 1TB of data. This was causing them to have to add more and more disk to their file and print servers. A major factor to be taken into consideration is the time needed to restore a server; one of the main objectives of this project was to reduce the amount of redundant data to be restored in a DR situation.

One of key issues for ITT Dublin was that their data was being viewed as one big pool, with all data being given the same priority when backed up; however the majority of this data was not being accessed regularly, a significant minority was "dead data", some of it was kept purely for compliance reasons, but this was costing the customer money and resources to maintain and manage it as one big bulk of information. Administrators were unable to view exactly what the data was and were therefore unable to prioritise it or delete it as appropriate.

This short-term solution was not sustainable in the long run for many reasons, including the cost of extra hardware and disk and the space required. Their backup window was shrinking constantly and if left unmanaged, this data growth was going to be impacting their whole backup solution in the near future, putting DR plans into jeopardy. Their existing backup solution, based on Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), was previously implemented successfully by Origina and had proven very effective in real-life disaster recovery situations. The situation needed to stay that way. ITT Dublin needed a tool to allow them to view their data and not just quantify it but categorise it, thus enabling them to delete, remove and prioritise the files. This would then allow them to save money, reduce the cost of hardware and resources and also pave the way for a full Hierarchical Storage Management solution in the future.

The Solution:

Origina implemented a solution based around IBM TotalStorage Productivity Centre (TPC) for data. Our technical team installed IBM TPC for data V3.1 on the relevant file and print servers and set parameters to enable the reports to run correctly. It was a staged approach, with the known problematic servers being addressed first, and then proceeding to the other servers.

This solution allows ITT Dublin to audit their heterogeneous storage environment at a very granular level, showing not only data quantity but also details such as file sizes, file types, information on when files were last accessed and modified, information about who accessed and modified these files.

Through an intuitive GUI interface, it uses the information gathered to show historically how the data has built up within the environment and shows likely trends in data changes in the future. Using this tool, ITT Dublin are able to view their data at a detailed level and free up disk space on existing servers, allowing them to plan future data growth. Long term, this will enable them to implement a fully tailored HSM solution, maximising the use of existing resource.

The Business Benefits:

"The big advantage of this solution is the very quick return on investment we will see in the near future. IBM TPC nails down exactly where the problems are on your file system and we now have a precise knowledge of what's going on in our environment." He continues: "For example, we thought pst files were using a lot of disk space but it turns out they were only using about 10%. It highlighted hundreds of thousands of html files stored on network drives and allowed us to eliminate them from our nightly backups. We also found other file types that were not so obvious to quantify, such as exe's, dll's; we didn't find as many mp3 and mpeg files as we had come to expect in a student environment".

"We're delighted with this solution because it optimises the ROI of our storage and data management solution and because it fits in neatly with the existing backup and recovery solution that was already implemented and successfully tested by Origina in the past.

Nigel Hughes
Principal Technical Officer
ITT Dublin

"Based on the work Origina has done with ITT Dublin in the past, building their storage and data management environment, the growth of their file data was becoming a concern on many levels, not least because of the pressure it was putting on their backup and recovery schedule." He continues: "It was also going to be a hindrance to ITT Dublin in the future as they move towards a Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) storage model which requires companies to know exactly what they are storing in order to cleverly assign data to the most suited and most cost-effective storage medium." He concludes: "The use of TPC will allow ITT Dublin to make their storage efficient and cost-effective."

Tomas O'Leary
Managing Director
Origina

"This project has highlighted hundreds of thousands of html files stored on network drives and allowed us to eliminate them from our nightly backups."

Nigel Hughes
Principal Technical Officer
ITT Dublin

Why choose Origina?

“Working with our business partner Origina, have delivered a powerful, innovative solution and service to ITT Dublin. Through collaboration, a commitment to deep skills and a focus on innovation that matters, we developed a unique solution that solves a real business issue for Institute while delivering consistently high customer satisfaction with our client. This project also recognises the essential role our Business Partners play in driving real innovation for our clients and making a difference in today's highly competitive marketplace."

Gareth McGlone,
Tivoli Brand Manager
IBM Ireland

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