CUSTOMER PROFILE
COMPANY: Mizuno USA, Norcross, GA
INDUSTRY: Manufacturer, Wholesaler,
Retailer, Distributor
ISSUES
- Delays in restoring data from tape backups
- Travel required between company locations to manage physical tapes
- Difficult to perform full system saves
- Had to manually manage archiving and purging of backups
- Need to maximize use of BRMS for backups
KEY SOLUTION
LaserVault ViTL Virtual Tape Library Solution
ViTL BENEFITS
- Restores 50-70% faster
- Ability to manage backups remotely; no longer need to travel to physical location
- Designed for use with both IBM i and BRMS
- Significantly easier to manage than using tape
- Backup windows reduced by 50% over using tape
- Naming backups is easy
- Automatic purge of expired backups
- Easy to perform full system saves
- Simple to implement
- Cost-effective backup solution
CHALLENGES
Having multiple locations was a challenge for Mizuno USA when it came to the nightly backups of their 4.0TB of iSeries data.
According to Butch Nelms, Sr. iSeries Operations Manager, it was necessary to travel between their different facilities, to physically manage the tape they used for their backups.
If there was a problem with a tape backup, Nelms would need to drive over an hour to fix it, often in the middle of the night.
Mizuno added LaserVault Backup to their tape backup process to address some of their backup challenges. Although this was an improvement over using tape alone, it did not give them the flexibility and speed they wanted for their backups.
SOLUTION
After looking at a number of solutions, Nelms chose to upgrade to UBD, the Universal Backup Device from LaserVault. According to Nelms it was the most cost-effective solution that suited their needs. Recently, Mizuno updated from using UBD to using LaserVault’s full-featured virtual tape library solution, ViTL.
“The transition from UBD to ViTL was seamless, and ViTL provides us the ability to incorporate our use of BRMS to more fully manage our iSeries backups.
“We used to have to travel between our locations to move our backups from server to server,” states Nelms. “Now I can do it all from my work station at home if I need to.
“The ViTL solution addresses all of the problems we were trying to solve. We have a 740Plus iSeries and it was simple to upgrade from using LaserVault Backup to UBD, and then take the next step to ViTL.”
SUMMARY
Nelms sums up their experience in switching to ViTL for their backups:
“Although we backup from a replicated partition and time is not really an issue, our backup windows are now about 50% faster than using LaserVault Backup and tape.
“ViTL does what physical tape did just a lot easier. And the real savings has been in restores which are now 50-70% faster.
“ViTL has made managing our backups easy. I can name backups on the fly, and the ability to easily purge or archive backups is a great feature.
“ViTL was very easy to implement and it’s a great product. We rely on it every day. Support has been very good and it’s been a great fit for Mizuno.”
