Alaska Power Replaces Their Aging SAN Infrastructure With a Cost-Effective Storage Spaces Solution

Recognized as one of the most progressive technology organization, State Utility company continued its success by its willingness to promote and develop long term, reliable energy and communication solutions while capitalizing on the innovation and technical expertise of its skilled and dedicated employees.  The majority of company’s applications were based on Windows platform and the primary data hosted by tradition SAN infrastructure running VMWare Virtualization. However, they became unhappy with their backup solution as an all in one appliance and single vendor lock-in and started to explore Veem as a backup repository. The company wanted to use Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces as the software defined storage platform, but needed to find the right solution partner to support the deployment. While also being a cost-effective platform to support Veem as the backup repository that could be installed to a server or JBODs.

The Solution: DataON Certified Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Backup Storage

Based on a consultation with DataON, the team decided to deploy Veem as their backup using a storage server appliance due to the fact it has the best performance if it is installed on the same hardware with the same location of repository.  The customer deployed the DataON certified Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 backup storage platform. Currently the customer is using this platform for primary backup and has deployed a 2nd platform for Disaster Recovery Site with full replication, with their favorite part being the deployed backup solution with ReFS and self-healing capability.

Customer Benefits

By choosing the Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Space on a DataON Backup platform the customer not only reduced the cost by 1/3, but it also improved the performance with a 90% reduction time for backups. By using this backup platform in the primary data center, the customer was able to save administration time and the maintenance required decreased.