One College Uncovers Six Compelling Reasons to use the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d for D2D Backup

Everyone has backup problems, and educational institutions with limited budgets and IT staff may feel the pain of backup more so than most. In a previous blog, I shared some of the specific backup and disaster recovery challenges that Midland Lutherans College (MLC) in Fremont, NE, was facing and how its initial selection of a NAS device fell short of resolving those issues. However MLC's Director of Information Technology, Ken Clipperton, did not abandon his search for a disk-based backup solution and found the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d a good match for MLC's backup requirements.

In doing a recent on-site visit to MLC to meet with Ken, it quickly became evident that he shares many of the same backup and recovery challenges that IT Directors at other colleges and universities face: a complex backup environment, limited IT budget and staff, students and faculty with varying degrees of technical expertise and a need to move his backup data offsite for disaster recovery (DR) purposes.

However unlike some other public institutions in other states, he has access to the State of Nebraska's Educational Network (Network Nebraska) which gives him access to high bandwidth, low cost WAN connections and even off-site facilities to which MLC can send replicas of its backup data. His only problem: identifying a solution that would allow him to take advantage of the resources that he had available to him without breaking his budget or becoming too onerous to manage.

It was this combination of requirements that eventually led Ken to select the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d over competing NAS solutions. While the StorCenter ix4-200d offers a variety of features, six (6) of them figured predominantly in his decision to select it over competing NAS offerings including:

• Less expensive, more effective and more efficient than upgrading his current file server. Ken's options included adding storage to his current HP server hardware that acts as his corporate file server and which serves as his current backup target for the small percentage of users who do opt to store their backups on this file server.
  

Before purchasing the StorCenter ix4-200d, he explored the cost to upgrade this file server. He found that the cost to install eight (8) new disk drives was approximately $400 each and the HP server hardware would only support 500 GB drives. So by opting for the Iomega StorCenter device, he got more capacity (8 TB raw versus 4 TB raw), spent less money (~$1800 versus $3200), needed a smaller footprint in his server room, used less energy and got more software features.

• Less expensive and more effective than other NAS/iSCSI options. Prior to the release of the StorCenter ix4-200d, Ken looked to a Buffalo TeraStation III to address his requirements and at a cost substantially above the StorCenter's cost. But the TeraStation's AD integration fell short of his requirements because it would require his server administrator to separately manage storage on the NAS including user/folder creation and setting quotas.

The TeraStation, like many NAS products, was insecure in that every folder was accessible to all users. Clipperton expects the StorCenter's AD integration to enable him to protect user files without the ongoing administrative overhead associated with less capable alternatives. Ken had looked into other iSCSI storage options but the systems he looked at cost many times what the StorCenter did.

• Simultaneous support for both the iSCSI and CIFS protocols. Since Ken is not sure which of these two will be optimal for backups in MLC's environment, he can select the protocol that is most appropriate for MLC. The iSCSI option is of interest because it would permit him to manage this storage through his existing file server. If iSCSI works better for client backups and CIFS for server backups, he is still good to go.

• Innovative and cost-effective product backed by a storage industry leader. Some of the alternative systems that might have met his feature and budget requirements came from companies with limited storage experience and which had no visible presence in the USA. Ken was concerned about the availability of support if he ran into problems either during implementation or down the road.

A product from Iomega and backed by EMC clearly didn't have either of those issues. His research also suggested that EMC plans to add more features into the StorCenter software. Since all StorCenter systems use the same software image and StorCenter owners get free software upgrades, this meant the StorCenter is not just a good solution now, it is a solution with future EMC innovations built in. Ken sees this as creating additional value for his organization.

• Unlimited EMC Retrospect Express client licenses. Putting backup software on each of MLC's 200+ employee desktops and laptops was not a line item that Ken had in his budget. However because the StorCenter ix4-200d included unlimited Retrospect Express client licenses, he was now in a position where he could extend data protection to all of MLC's employee desktops and laptops without eating into his budget.

• Lays the groundwork for MLC to do off-site replication of backup data. Ken knows one of the disadvantages of doing disk-to-disk (D2D) backup is that all of the data remains onsite. This is why he purchased an additional StorCenter ix4-200d. Initially he is placing the second StorCenter in another location on campus but ultimately intends to place it at the Computing Services Network (CSN) data center in Lincoln, NE and replicate data to that site.

• Disk-to-disk-to-disk (D2D2D) backup for servers. Prior to the StorCenter ix4-200d implementation, MLC was using a traditional tape-based approach to server backups to backup MLC's server-based storage amounts of about 2TB.

Ken saw an opportunity to leverage the NAS purchase to jump from D2T all the way to D2D2D by taking advantage of both NAS replication and NAS support for backing up to USB-attached hard drives. Concurrent with the purchase of the StorCenter, he purchased a dozen 2 TB hard drives in USB enclosures. Each external hard drive replaces one set of tapes in their old D2T backup process.

MLC's IT staff then reserved 2TB of the StorCenter ix4-200d's storage for server backups and changed the server backups to target this backup volume on the StorCenter instead of their old tape drives.

MLC will use the StorCenter's scheduled backup facility to automate the copying of the backup volume to an external hard drive attached to one of the three USB ports available on the device. MLC may still create an occasional tape backup for longer term archives, but day-to-day operations are moving to a pure D2D2D setup. They are getting these results at a cost that is nearly an order of magnitude lower than alternatives that were proposed to them and which he simply would not have afforded to implement.

These features are not the only ones that factored into Ken's decision to purchase the StorCenter ix4-200d. Its inclusion on VMware's Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) initially got his attention since he is looking to virtualize more of MLC's servers in the near future and this feature could be of use to him at that time.
 
Ken found that these six features clearly differentiated the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d from competitive offerings and eventually convinced him to select it as the new disk-based backup target for MLC. It solved his immediate backup problems, met his budgetary constraints and laid the groundwork for him to perform replication tasks that once were only reserved for high end enterprises. In my next and final blog in this 3-part series, Ken will some of the challenges he is encountering during testing as well as some of the new opportunities that the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d creates for MLC.

Part 1 of this 3-part series discusses MLC's criteria for selecting a disk-based backup solution for its environment