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LeapFrog, a designer, developer and
marketer of technology-based learning products, needed a major upgrade to
its network–more specifically, its switches, processing power and storage
systems. Essentially, LeapFrog’s supply chain and IT systems in data
warehousing were inadequate for its business requirements. Senior Vice
President and CIO Robert Moon sought to increase the company’s storage
capacity and reduce costs for its multitiered data storage environment.
Since the majority of the products produced in-house were software, audio
and animation clips, there were many large files, both Windows-based and
Mac-based, that end-users needed to access. To keep pace with business, the
company needed to expand its current storage environment to include its new
enterprise resource-planning system, while also providing its end-users with
adequate space for projects.
Moon decided to migrate the company’s expensive SAN environment to a more
flexible and manageable SAN array system utilizing Pillar Data System’s
Axiom 500. Moon’s staff tested the solution for about five months, and after
studying the system’s architecture, he purchased his first 14-terabyte
system.
Moon currently uses Axiom 500 to house network files and Microsoft Exchange
files, though, over time, he plans to scale capacity and migrate LeapFrog’s
entire Oracle database system.
Moon’s decision to purchase the product was based on the system’s ability to
provision logical unit numbers with different quality-of-service levels
within the same array, which resulted in higher utilization rates and lower
costs. Another feature was that administrators did not need to keep a
separate spreadsheet for the systems to know which disk goes where when
partitioning out particular disks, because the array does this task
automatically.
“To me, it comes down to a critical combination of quality, reliability,
support and service after we buy it, and of course price,†Moon says. “I’m
not going to buy something just based on price. The hardware and software
that safeguard our data must be quality products that do what we really need
them to do. Reliability is the key factor. Of course, we must also have
confidence that our vendor will stand behind the product, because if we do
have a problem and we need help, we need it now. Pillar sold us an
enterprise storage system with seven times the capacity for about half the
price quoted by a competitor.â€
Moon stresses that with the management software he no longer needs to send
somebody to school to learn how to use SAN, iSCSI or Fibre Channel
technologies. Pillar’s Axiom virtually monitors itself and alerts staff if
there is ever an issue. LeapFrog is now saving approximately 40% to 50% on
its storage costs, he says, particularly when factoring in labor management
savings.
Moon is also creating a remote disaster-recovery hot site in Arizona for the
entire company, in which all data will be entrusted to a Pillar Axiom
system. He also plans to use Pillar’s volume replication solution, which
will enable LeapFrog to heterogeneously replicate volumes of data to and
from an Axiom platform for enhanced data protection at the Arizona site.
For more information from Pillar Data Systems:
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