Data Backup Digest

Philadelphia Mixing Solutions, headquartered of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, has long been a leader in the development of agitation and aeration hardware. With a massive laboratory that is dedicated toward researching and optimizing such equipment, the company certainly generates its fair share of data. With this in mind, the company has recently undergone a number of technological renovations that are expected to ensure business continuity and success well into the future.

Linda Lingle, director of information technology with Philadelphia Mixing Solutions, spoke about the challenges her company faced when introducing Veeam to their network. She was quoted as saying: “When I joined the company they had started down the path of a VMware implementation, but the virtualization infrastructure was in disarray. We had four disparate and underpowered SANs that couldn’t support our production systems. We didn’t have a disaster recovery solution in place, and we had a very complex environment with multiple silos of storage.”

She continued by saying: “From a complexity perspective, not knowing where specific data resided across the four different SANS made it a nightmare to manage. We had physical footprint issues and slow response times across important applications. We had a desire to virtualize more of our environment and production systems but our infrastructure couldn’t support it. It was quite clear we needed to investigate storage alternatives.”

As you can see, it was crucial that Lingle and her team were able to introduce updated technology that was able to accommodate their needs as related to performance, scalability and reliability. After testing a number of technologies and systems, the team finally settled on the NexGen N5 Hybrid Flash Array to streamline and centralize their data storage functionality.

To this extent, Lingle’s team implemented dual NexGen N5-100 arrays with capacities of 32 terabytes each. One array is meant for use inside their own production environment while the other is reserved for use in their data recovery strategy. Moreover, the team with Philadelphia Mixing Solutions is able to manage their NexGen N5-100 arrays via VMware’s vCenter, which provides a simplified and user-friendly interface.

Believe it or not, the reliability of their NexGen N5-100 Hybrid Flash Arrays has already put to the test in the face of a real disaster. After only a month of implementing the new hardware, a newly formed sinkhole damaged a portion of the company’s storage facilities. Thanks to the destruction of the company’s electricity transformers, they were forced to do business from several large-scale power generators for more than two full months. However, their newly installed NexGen N5-100 Hybrid Flash Arrays maintained activity – as well as efficiency and reliability – throughout the entire time.

Moreover, Philadelphia Mixing Solutions has been able to virtualize 17 of the 20 servers that are currently in use. They’ve also enjoyed a massive performance boost after transitioning its ERP system to a database that is stored within one of their N5-100 arrays. Such effects have prompted the team to look into other virtualization options, including VMware’s Horizon View Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, as a means of bolstering their day-to-day operations even further.