Data recovery expert Kroll Ontrack has deployed a range of Hitachi Data Systems' products to help virtualise and consolidate its storage environment.
The company has implemented Hitachi's Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) and other products to improve management of its data and efficiently allocate capacity using a combination of VMware virtual machines and physical servers fronted by a single interface.
With its existing storage hardware approaching end-of-maintenance and data volumes ever increasing, the company had to implement a new system without adversely affecting its ability to meet customer performance and response time targets.
The new storage environment, which underlies all of the file and application servers at Kroll Ontrack, are stored on VMware virtual machines, hosted on Hitachi VSP. The consolidated virtual storage environment is managed centrally, through a single interface provided by Hitachi Command Suite software. The previous 12 storage racks have been replaced with just three Hitachi VSP racks, which are expected to save power and cooling costs at the data centre.
"We purchased Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) 2500 about a year ago and were very satisfied with its performance, so we were confident that HDS would provide us with a workable solution," said Cory Cater, Kroll Ontrack's technical architect.
"We wanted to enhance our virtualisation capabilities in order to support replication for disaster recovery as well as to simplify capacity management and allocation across our infrastructure. It was therefore a natural choice for us to deploy Hitachi VSP," he added.
Consultants from Hitachi Global Solution Services (GSS) were involved in the design and deployment of the platform within Kroll Ontrack'sdata centre.
Cater said that HDS had given Kroll Ontrack "a great deal of support" from the beginning of the contract.
"Migrating data seamlessly using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform has enabled us to efficiently handle information for ourselves and, more importantly, our customers," he added.
