St. John’s Prep in Danvers, Mass., has deployed TwinStrata CloudArray® as the enabler for its cloud-based backup and recovery strategy.
Deployed in March 2012, TwinStrata CloudArray seamlessly integrates cloud storage into St. John’s Prep’s environment. CloudArray presents as an iSCSI device to the school’s backup software – currently Symantec Backup Exec – making the backup process effortless and pain-free.
Prior to the implementation, St. John’s Prep performed disk-to-disk-to-tape backup with limited offsite protection. The cloud represented the ideal way to ensure adequate offsite data protection while streamlining the backup process itself. TwinStrata’s ability to deploy an instance in cloud compute environments made the solution particularly attractive, providing a simple and easy disaster recovery option.
“We have a small team here at the school, and we needed a solution that wouldn’t take too much work to either set up or to maintain,” said Christopher Butler, Director of Information Services at St. John’s Prep. “We looked into offsite tape storage as an extension of our previous backup strategy, but we were concerned about how long it would take to recover our data in the event of a disaster. TwinStrata was the perfect solution – set, forget and recover in the cloud if disaster strikes.”
TwinStrata CloudArray provides St. John’s Prep with simple, effective access to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Provisioning is simple and cost-effective – Butler has configured an eight-terabyte cloud-based volume, but only pays for the four terabytes the school actually uses. As the school’s data volumes continue to grow, the additional capacity will be there when needed.
“St. John’s Prep is a lot like many of our other customers – organizations with a small, but effective team, looking to manage their storage needs smarter, better and more efficiently,” said Nicos Vekiarides, CEO of TwinStrata. “For these companies, cloud storage gives them back time, resources and peace of mind.”
