NetApp announced that the Breckenridge Group (BGI) created a more efficient and effective storage environment with the recent implementation of the StoreVault S500 storage solution.

BGI is a management firm specializing in the development, operations, and ongoing support of various restaurant and hotel locations throughout the western United States. BGI's IT environment consisted of 150 workstations and 250 PC-based point of sales (POS) terminals in the field along with 80 workstations, 14 physical servers, and 16 virtual servers that were located in the company's main office. With more than 4TB of direct-attached storage (DAS), the tasks of archiving, accessing, and backing up data were cumbersome.

Furthermore, before installation of StoreVault, BGI utilized tape-based backup that was time consuming and difficult for new IT employees to quickly grasp. To complicate matters, BGI's mission-critical data was growing at a rate of 500GB annually.

"BGI's data proliferation was quickly reaching levels that made it more and more difficult for our previous storage architecture to handle," said James Gantes, chief information officer with BGI. "We needed a solution that we could trust to manage our business-critical data and streamline our IT processes. NetApp more than met all of our key criteria, all at a great price point to boot."

With a limited budget, BGI looked into a wide range of different storage solutions. After comparing several different products, it became evident that NetApp supported more interfaces at a reduced cost when placed side by side with the competition. After installation of the StoreVault S500, BGI witnessed a dramatic improvement in its backup process and a more consolidated storage solution. BGI's initial concerns about network storage performance in a virtualized environment were also quickly erased as benchmarks revealed 400 to 500 megabits per second over NAS and 700 to 800 megabits over iSCSI, even in an unoptimized environment.

NetApp Snapshot technology has provided BGI with a more reliable and seamless way to recover important backup data than its previous system. Additionally, the combination of StoreVault and VMware allows BGI to conduct painless storage and server upgrades. BGI has also leveraged NetApp software partner BakBone Software, streamlining the tape backup processes and managing StoreVault Snapshot technology, tape backup, and tape automation through a single interface for maximum simplicity.

"The NetApp solution has been a vital cog in our IT environment and has really allowed me to easily consolidate our storage architecture," said Gantes. "With the wealth of business-critical information that is managed by our storage system, we can't afford any downtime. With NetApp, downtime is no longer a worry, allowing me to focus my attention on other areas."

"Midmarket customers today demand a storage solution that provides enterprise-level functionality at a midmarket price," said Sajai Krishnan, general manager of the StoreVault division. "The NetApp solution is the ideal fit, enabling BGI to consolidate their storage environment while providing them with an efficient yet affordable solution. As midmarket customers look to deploy virtual server solutions, the bar is raised on storage, and NetApp's StoreVault offerings are without question one of the most affordable virtualization-matched storage."

The StoreVault S500 is a scalable all-in-one networked storage appliance that is customized for midmarket companies at a price point that fits midmarket budgets. With its intuitive Windows graphical user interface, the StoreVault S500 is easy to install and simple to manage while providing enterprise-class networked storage functionality. The StoreVault S500 has been deployed across a wide range of industries to help solve the growing customer challenges of data growth, data protection, and data management.