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Royal British Legion Creates Flexible Disaster Recovery Platform with EqualLogic

Dynamic Data Protection for Charity Supplied by PS Series iSCSI SAN

LONDON, U.K. 23rd April 2007 — EqualLogic®, the leading provider of enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, today announced that the Royal British Legion has created a robust disaster recovery strategy based on EqualLogic's PS Series iSCSI SAN solution. By using a disk-based storage platform at a remote location, the Royal British Legion can now protect critical data and recover faster from any issue that could affect the charity's main data centre.

The Royal British Legion is the UK’s leading charity, providing financial, social and emotional support to millions who have served and are currently serving in the Armed Forces. The Royal British Legion's IT department hosts a number of applications including Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and Internet Information Services (IIS), as well as human resources, fund-raising and finance applications. The charity’s previous disaster recovery strategy consisted of copying critical data to tapes that would then be stored off-site. While this approach was operating adequately, it provided limited data restoration functionality compared to what the Royal British Legion wanted to achieve.

Head of IT Richard Lovelock decided to invest in expanding the Royal British Legion’s storage strategy in order to deliver a faster and more flexible recovery from any incident than was possible with tape alone. After completing an evaluation with partner Virso, the Royal British legion chose an EqualLogic PS400E storage array to create a consolidated storage platform at its remote site. Data from the servers within the main IT operations centre is replicated across a LES 100 megabit line to the SAN, where it would be ready for access instantly in the event of any disaster. For any data that is no longer critical, this can be removed from the SAN onto tapes for storage.

“We wanted to improve our DR processes to achieve a much quicker set-up and recovery time compared to the tape-based system we had in place,” explained Lovelock. “We decided that an approach based on disk-to-disk transfer of data would give us the functionality that we needed, and then we could use tape to provide our long-term storage needs. The EqualLogic PS400E delivered what we wanted: flexibility and ease of management at a very cost-effective price point. Because the array is IP-based, no additional networking equipment had to be installed. Following installation, the box has been very low maintenance and has required no further training or manpower to support it.”

“Protecting data against potential corruption or loss is key to an effective disaster recovery strategy, and using a SAN-based disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) system delivers a more granular solution than a solely tape-based system,” said Paul Klinkby-Silver, vice president for EMEA, EqualLogic. “Replication allows organisations like the Royal British Legion to be more efficient in their approach to disaster recovery and information lifecycle management, while increasing the flexibility of data restoration in case of any issue.”

EqualLogic’s PS Series storage arrays deliver a dynamic virtual storage solution to meet the needs of companies of all sizes, offering a reliable, scalable pool of storage that responds automatically to user requirements. The PS Series is the only native iSCSI SAN solution to offer a comprehensive and fully integrated standard feature set at no additional cost. Each storage array from EqualLogic comes with fully redundant, fault-tolerant hardware and includes automatic storage management software. Multiple arrays combine to form a scalable storage grid that expands in capacity as needed without disruption.

About EqualLogic
EqualLogic® makes data storage systems that radically simplify the way mid-size and large businesses store and protect information. EqualLogic’s award-winning PS Series storage area network (SAN) solution provides sophisticated management capabilities that reduce the time and money IT staff spend on storage. EqualLogic serves thousands of customers in 35 countries from its headquarters in Nashua, New Hampshire, and offices throughout Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit http://www.equallogic.com.


EqualLogic® is a registered trademark of EqualLogic®, Inc. Other marks belong to their respective owners.

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