Intelligent Data Centres Issue 32 | Page 49

BUNDUQ SAW IMMEDIATE BENEFITS OF INTRODUCING THE ONEXAFE 4412 PLATFORM INTO ITS INFRASTRUCTURE .
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upper limit , at which point they would be forced to add more storage controllers or look to system upgrades and newer models with higher capacities .
This , of course , was not cost-effective at all , not with the growing volume of data the company needed to backup . Also , as its data would grow , this scaleup storage architecture would become increasingly complex to manage , with severe inefficiencies in data migration and workload resource allocation . Seeing that this setup could no longer meet the company ’ s needs , especially not in the long-run , Fahmawi and his team decided to upgrade to a scale-out storage solution .
“ We needed a solution that would not only be compatible with our hyperconverged setup , but one that would also be able to manage the sheer volume of data we were generating and needed to backup ,” said Fahmawi .
“ Our data growth is exponential and we had to have multiple backups in place to cover our Disaster Recovery site . But this was becoming complex and inefficient – we wanted to consolidate everything in one place .”
The solution
Understanding Bunduq ’ s needs , UAEbased IT and cybersecurity solution provider , Unicorp Technologies LLC , and one of StorageCraft ’ s regional partners , recommended the OneXafe platform to Fahmawi and his team . OneXafe easily blend into the company ’ s setup , secure its data and , most importantly , would meet its mounting capacity needs . It was also more powerful and offered a much wider range of features compared to any of its alternatives .
“ StorageCraft ’ s OneXafe series not only provided scale-out architecture , but it also offered ransomware protection to backup files thanks to the immutable snapshots it takes every 90 seconds , which made it unique when compared to other storage solutions .
" It also had replication features built into the same license , which made it that much more cost-effective . And the management console OneSystem made it much easier to manage – with all these advanced features , we felt that OneXafe met our needs and then some ,” said Fahmawi .
OneXafe is designed to offer scalable capacity for either primary or secondary workloads and immutable storage . It expands storage seamlessly – by either adding one drive at a time , or multiple nodes within a cluster – without any configuration changes to the application . OneXafe also minimises storage requirements with powerful data reduction technologies such as inline deduplication and compression , therefore reducing costs of storage as well as operational expenses .
BUNDUQ SAW IMMEDIATE BENEFITS OF INTRODUCING THE ONEXAFE 4412 PLATFORM INTO ITS INFRASTRUCTURE .
The results
Bunduq saw immediate benefits of introducing the OneXafe 4412 platform into its infrastructure .
“ It is an incredibly user-friendly solution ; it ’ s just plug and play . The implementation was quick , it fit in seamlessly and we didn ’ t need any training .
" It requires limited monitoring , limited maintenance . It has been so effective that within a year , we were adding a second box to the cluster to increase our backup coverage ,” said Fahmawi .
Bunduq now stores more than 80 TB of business-critical data on OneXafe . The company ’ s IT team has also been impressed with the solution ’ s superior deduplication and compression features , which have severely reduced its storage footprint .
According to Fahmawi , last year , the data received clocked in at around 562 TB , but the data ultimately returned to storage registered nearer to 73 TB . Now , after two years of using OneXafe , Bunduq ’ s IT team is reporting a data reduction ratio of just under 8:1 .
“ OneXafe ’ s performance has exceeded our expectations – its Return on Investment is quite substantial . Its scalability , as well as its compression and deduplication technology have boosted our efficiency and reduced our cost of operations . And its ransomware protection ensures that our businesscritical data is secure . It supports any expansion plans we might undertake now , or in the future ,” said Fahmawi . ◊ www . intelligentdatacentres . com
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