American Institute of Physics Speeds Backup and Recovery Times with SEPATON Virtual Tape Library

By: Reference and Education News

SEPATON, Inc., the leader in high-performance data protection solutions, today announced that the American Institute of Physics (AIP), a national organization that promotes the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics, has chosen a SEPATON S2100(R)-ES2 virtual tape library (VTL) as a key part of its data protection strategy to get the speed, flexibility, and high availability its organization required.

AIP depends on a sophisticated, centralized Oracle(R) database system to run its complex operations including membership and circulation management, journal publication management, and a wide range of business operations. "Our ability to access and manage data is central to our success as an organization," said James T. Wonder, director of Online Technology, AIP. "We have very high standards for our data protection."

Before choosing SEPATON, AIP was using Qualstar(R) tape libraries and EMC(R) NetWorker(R) software to backup and restore their data. As AIP's data volume continued to increase over time, its backup and restore times were growing longer, putting their stringent recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) at risk.

"As a rule, we take action well before an issue becomes a crisis," said Wonder. "We anticipated a need for a faster, more flexible system that would not be disruptive to our existing infrastructure and we immediately began to investigate virtual tape library technology as a solution." AIP also wanted a solution that would support their long-term data protection plans. "Over the next four years we plan to move to a tapeless environment," said Wonder. "Moving to disk will save us time, money and end-user aggravation."

The Evaluation

The organization chose to evaluate a SEPATON S2100-ES2 virtual tape library (VTL) solution. Two important factors set SEPATON apart. "First, the SEPATON technology had the backup and restore performance we wanted and second, SEPATON has a long-term product "roadmap" that dovetails with our four-year plan," said Wonder. "We felt that SEPATON's forward-thinking roadmap would enable us to realize our vision of a tapeless environment and it would continue to be an industry-leading technology well into the future."

AIP performed an extensive on-site evaluation of the SEPATON VTL in a full production environment. "We challenged it in it every way we knew how and it performed perfectly," said Wonder.

AIP installed a 7 TB SEPATON S2100-ES2 and continued to use its NetWorker software without changing policies or procedures. "I can't believe how easy it was to put it into our environment, said Wonder. "I plugged it in, turned it on and started using it. The GUI was so easy to use, I was delighted."

The Results

The AIP organization saw immediate results from its SEPATON system. Backup times have been dramatically reduced and restoring their data has never been faster or easier. "We can find and restore whatever data we need in a few minutes," said Wonder. "That means our end-users are getting better service and our organization is operating more efficiently."

In the near term, AIP intends to take advantage of SEPATON's uniquely scalable technology to grow their SEPATON system in terms of both speed and capacity. "Going forward, we also plan to replace our off-site tape vaulting with the SEPATON Site2(TM) electronic vaulting software and to implement SEPATON's DeltaStor(R) software for data de-duplication," said Wonder. "We are very pleased with our investment in SEPATON technology."

"AIP is a perfect example of a business deriving immediate benefit from its investment in VTL technology," said Mike Worhach, president and CEO, SEPATON, Inc. "It is wisely planning for the future in anticipation of continued growth and with the S2100-ES2, it can easily add capacity and performance while taking advantage of new applications like off-site data vaulting."

About the American Institute of Physics

The American Institute of Physics is a not-for-profit corporation with a mission to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics and related fields of science and engineering and its applications to human welfare. Publishing and publishing services are part of that mission. In addition to publishing magazines and journals, AIP provides composition, printing, fulfillment, marketing, and other services to science and engineering publishers. AIP also fulfills its mandate by operating Scitation, the online home of more than 150 leading journals published by twenty science and engineering societies.

About SEPATON, Inc.

SEPATON is enabling companies of any size to comply with demanding data storage and retrieval requirements by changing the rules of data protection and leading the evolution to NO TAPES. We provide innovative, disk-based solutions that are intelligent, reliable and reduce storage, management and recovery costs. Because the proven SEPATON ContentAware(TM) architecture keeps track of all files and content, it enables faster and more efficient performance of a range of advanced data protection, data retention and data recovery functions. SEPATON's virtual tape library systems dramatically out-perform tape and other disk-based solutions.

SEPATON, SRE and S2100 are registered trademarks of SEPATON Corporation. ContentAware, Site2 and DeltaStor are trademarks of SEPATON Corporation. All other brand and product names are or may be trademarks of their respective owners.