Indiana Wesleyan University modernizes storage strategy

Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) has deployed a storage modernization strategy based on TwinStrata CloudArray® and implemented by MMY Consulting.

The solution enables Indiana Wesleyan University to retire its old, overloaded tape-based backup system and easily scale to meet the growing needs of the University. Previously, IWU struggled to keep up with the pace of backup requirements, using aging equipment that often led to stuck tapes or failing drives. The result was that backups could take days to complete and move offsite, leaving data unprotected from onsite disasters.

Today, IWU’s offsite data protection strategy uses TwinStrata CloudArray to ensure that its backup data is quickly and effectively replicated offsite in the Nirvanix cloud. With its implementation partner MMY Consulting, IWU has found that the new solution provides the organization with significantly greater capacity to backup, leading to more data under protection than its previous solution.

In addition, IWU’s recovery process has improved drastically. Previously, recovery required identifying the right tape, locating it offsite, transporting it back to the main campus and reserving time for the tape drives to do a restoration. Today, recovery can be nearly instantaneous, particularly for smaller files.

“We had reached a point where our tape backup system was both inconvenient and overloaded,” said Brian Israel, director of IT infrastructure, University Information Technology, at Indiana Wesleyan University. “With the combination of MMY’s expertise and TwinStrata’s cloud-integrated storage, we now have a new system that could accommodate our offsite data protection requirements that was quickly scalable, as well as easily retrievable.”

“Higher education institutions such as Indiana Wesleyan University often have constraints around costs, equipment life-cycles and maintenance,” said Rod Rudd, MMY Consulting’s Practice Director for Cloud Computing. “We work closely with organizations such as those represented by the Independent Colleges of Indiana to help them identify the best solution to address their storage needs.”

“For educational and not-for-profit organizations such as Indiana Wesleyan, cloud-integrated storage is a way to move beyond the boundaries and limitations of traditional storage infrastructure,” said Nicos Vekiarides, CEO of TwinStrata. “With MMY, we provide organizations pay-as-you-go storage solutions that address all their needs without the maintenance headaches – whether it’s increasing capacity for encrypted offsite data protection, archive storage or primary storage for local campuses.”