See how the City of Safford used GridBank to dramatically improve their storage management and reduce costs

2. End User Case Study:
The City of Safford
Arizona Municipality Tackles Data Archiving while
Reducing Costs and Storage Footprint
Monday, October 12th, 3:45-4:30 pm
Archiving Track
Derek Kruger, IT & Communications Supervisor, MCSE, MBA
City of Safford, Arizona

3. Welcome
•! Cameras, laptops,
devices welcome
•! Twitter
–! ZenNerd – follow me
–! #SNWUSA – tweet about the
conference
–! #SNWKruger - tweet about
this session
•! Ask questions any time

4. City of Safford, Arizona
•! County Seat of
Graham County
Population of 10,000
•! City government
housed in 10
buildings
•! Three-person team
supports 250 users
for: servers,
software, storage,
network, and
telephony

5. City of Safford:
Technology Environment: Before
•! Storage:
!!DAS & iSCSI SAN environments
!!Dell/EqualLogic 5000 (Primary storage)
!!Drobo Pro
!!Micron 440s
!!OPEN-E (backup)
!!Windows Storage Server 2008
•! OS’s:
!!Windows Server 2003
!!Windows Server 2008
•! Primary Servers:
!! 4 Hyper-V Hosts running on Dell
Poweredge 1950/2950

6. The Challenge
•! Constrained CAPEX
and OPEX budgets
•! IT resource limitations
RISK
•! Continued growth in
demand for data
resources
•! Backup Issues
OPEX CAPEX
•! Need for constant
access to data
•! Lengthy data
retention
requirements

7. Breaking Down the Challenge
•! CAPEX and OPEX for
storage not controlled Fun Data Retention Facts
•! Primary storage not 80% of data does not change
optimized after 90 days
–! Too much data stored in --Storage Networking Industry
primary storage Association (SNIA)
•! Backup windows too long
–! 24 hours for full server backup
82% of companies are not
•! E-discovery issues addressing the Federal Rules of
–! Very lengthy discovery Civil Procedure
–! Expensive --Storage Magazine
–! Manual process and IT
resource intensive 14,000 regulations govern
•! Tape handling, media too record retention just in the
expensive United States
•! Need for security --Computerworld
•! Legal data retention
requirements

8. Coming up with a Solution
•! Create a tiered storage environment
•! Chose an active-archive/ILM software solution
•! Put automated policies in place
–! Data retention, disposition, digital shredding
–! Tiering
–! Security, encryption, and end user access controls
•! Optimize resources – hardware, software, IT
personnel
•! Insure transparent end user access of migrated
data
•! Secure self-service for end users
•! Respond to FOIA requests in a timely manner
•! Comply with AZ State Data Retention Laws

9. Current Server Room

10. The Solution:
Tiered Storage and Active Archive Using
GridBank™
•!Tiered storage solution
PRIMARY TIER: !!Move as much data as
6TB Array (using existing possible from high cost
hardware) primary storage to much lower
Internal Server DAS Disk cost secondary storage tiers
•! Create a tier of secondary
storage with a GridBank
SECONDARY, ARCHIVING TIER:
virtual storage pool consisting
20TB Total Virtual Storage Pool –
(using existing, multi-vendor hardware)
of heterogeneous disk arrays
GridBank software •! Add Amazon S3 Cloud
storage service to secondary
tier in Q4 ‘09 using
SECONDARY, ARCHIVING TIER:
GridBank’s cloud storage
Amazon S3 Cloud Storage Service
to be added –
target support
Tied to GridBank software •! Tape backup depreciated
•! Disk-based backup with
continuous data protection

11. The New Technology Environment:
Network Storage Architecture
Production Secondary Active Archival:
Environment Tarmin Technologies’ GridBank
7 - Dell 1950/2950 Servers Grid-based server, software command
Windows 2003, 2008 layer, and metadata management
Linux (planned)
CIFS, NFS
IP LAN/WAN
WebDAV
Storage Virtual Pool: Amazon
Micron Arrays S3 Cloud
Drobo Pro Storage Planned
20 TB Q4 ‘09
iSCSI SAN DAS Internal
Dell/EqualLogic Hard Disk
Primary Storage

12. The Solution:
GridBank
•! Active-archive/ILM software:
–! Policy-based automated data migration to low cost secondary storage
–! Set policies on data retention, security, migration etc
–! Perform rapid E-discovery
–! Repurposed storage hardware from multiple vendors into single virtual
storage pool

13. GridBank’s Impact
•! Optimized primary storage
–! Reduced footprint by over 50 %
–! Migrated 3 TB to low cost secondary storage
–! Policy-based migration set at 90 days when files not changed
•! Dramatically tightened backup windows
–! Full server backup reduced from 24 hours to ONLY 8 hours
–! CDP to Open-E box
–! Archiving to secondary/tertiary storage and offsite cloud storage (Amazon
S3)

14. GridBank’s Impact
•! Reduced IT labor on storage management through policy-
based automation
–! Added policies for security, encryption, compression, file-
based SIS, data retention, data disposition, migration etc
•! E-discovery in secs/mins vs. weeks/months
–! Future end user roll-out will allow secure end user self-service

15. How IT’s Role has Changed
•! Reduced City’s storage CAPEX and OPEX
•! Focus shifting from reactive to proactive
•! Substantially reduced time for E-discovery of
unstructured data
•! FOIA Requests no longer a burden
•! GridBank solution simplified search process:
single pane of glass vs. 2 or 3 before
•! Audit capability
•! Secure storage environment
•! Improved backup windows and processes
•! Automated policy-based design frees up staff
for non-storage management IT functions

16. Plans for the Future
•! SharePoint project with active archiving of data to GridBank
•! Windows 2008, server virtualization, and Exchange 2010
deployments and archiving using GridBank
•! Re-design of Active Directory
•! Drive down storage and IT cost savings with archiving/ILM

17. Plans for the Future
•! Add Linux to primary
storage and server
infrastructure
•! Archive/tier Linux data
to GridBank
•! Add Amazon S3 Cloud
Storage Service to
GridBank configuration
– Q4 ‘09

18. Thank you
Derek Kruger
dkruger@ci.safford.az.us
Twitter: ZenNerd
#SNWUSA
#SNWKruger