FalconStor announced that one of Europe´s largest accounting firms, Mazars, has deployed the FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS), powered by FalconStor IPStor software, to strengthen its storage capacity. Delivered in conjunction with FalconStor partner Intercept IT, the FalconStor Network Storage Server provides cutting edge disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities, while retaining Mazars´ existing storage infrastructure, maximizing the return on its existing storage investment.

Mazars´ requirements for its new storage solution included deployment of storage to VMware as well as new applications such as improved stability of the storage; replacement of the existing disaster recovery (DR) plan; provision of business continuity (BC) in the event of disk failure; simplification of storage management; and reuse of existing storage infrastructure.

Intercept IT and FalconStor met these requirements by assisting Mazars with the selection of the relevant optional services available as part of the FalconStor NSS solution:

• Snapshot Director for VMware ensures the transactional consistency of VMware applications
• Synchronous Mirroring option protects the RAID subsystem, ensuring storage stability
• Replication option provides DR capabilities
• TimeMark option delivers Business Continuity by creating scheduled or on-demand point-in-time snapshots
• Storage Service Enabler option enables seamless migration of data to the newly configured storage system
• Application-aware Snapshot Agents ensure the transactional consistency for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL servers

A total of 4TB of storage serving 20 HP servers is now managed and protected by the FalconStor NSS solution – a volume reported as doubling annually. A virtual and service-enabled fibre channel SAN spans multiple sites, replacing direct-attached storage (DAS). Two NSS servers in an active/active configuration replicate to a single, remote, disaster recovery NSS server. DotHill SANet II and Xyratex storage subsystems provide the storage capacity.

Jayson Dudley, Service Delivery Manager at Mazars, said, “We wanted to lay down solid foundations for our growing data protection and storage management needs. The FalconStor NSS solution delivered all the functionality we required, managed by a single console. We´ve also been quite proactive in deploying VMware, but a virtual platform, like a physical one, needs protection. FalconStor Snapshot Director for VMware VI3 is a cost-effective, easily-deployable way to ensure complete application data integrity for our Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server virtual machines running on VMware ESX with the FalconStor NSS.”

Steve Whitfield, Sales Manager at Intercept IT, said: “Tackling so many issues in a single deployment could have been expensive as well as complicated. But FalconStor not only made it straightforward to implement, its lack of vendor lock-in also enabled us to re-use the customer´s existing hardware, which reduced the overall project expenditure for the customer.”

Thomas Barrett, Northern Region Director, FalconStor, said, ”This project demonstrates that companies do not need to shy away from simultaneously tackling all the issues in their storage infrastructure. The nature of the FalconStor NSS optional services means that there is little additional headache involved in addressing everything at once.”

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