RMH chooses Gridstore and gets faster access to engineering customer files and 37.5 per cent decrease in backup time

"Our files are our life blood at RMH. We must have enough disc space, speed and capacity to provide access to our customer information, as well as our backup files, whenever we call for it. As is common with storage, our existing resources would eventually fill and we would need more," said Troy Kuskie, IT Manager at The RMH Group. "With the state of the technology in our existing data centre, it was a huge undertaking to add on storage."

Because of the need to both maintain a corporate archive and decrease backup times RMH began investigating vendors to provide a new storage solution. In search of a high performance, minimally disruptive option, they investigated products from several vendors, including HP 3Par and Nexsan, but were not satisfied and sought out Gridstore.

Gridstore supported RMH in a trial to evaluate the system's fit in their environment. Being able to thoroughly evaluate the technology before making a commitment to buy was a big plus for RMH. To test the Gridstore solution, RMH brought in four capacity storage nodes that provided the required storage capacity and acted as the target for backing up the entire data centre.

According to RMH, the Gridstore installation was simple, and there was absolutely no disruption in service. The directions were self-explanatory; plug in the nodes, set the IP addresses, and install the controller and grid management software. They provisioned the discs and added them to the servers: the nodes were functioning. Installation took between 20 and 30 minutes.

"Gridstore worked with me and went out of their way to make sure I was satisfied," said Kuskie. "I requested some network interface fine-tuning that the support staff was happy to accommodate. I came away from the experience knowing the company believes in its offerings and wanted to make me successful in my purchase. I am completely confident having Gridstore running in The RMH Group data center."

The RMH Group realised several benefits from the Gridstore implementation:
• Ability to start with the right amount of storage for the customer archive today, with the ability to scale over time by adding additional nodes
• Gridstore solution has provided a 37.5 per cent decrease in back up window time
• The right mix of price and performance for their organisation's file and backup needs