Miller Electric Mfg Deploys JetStor Arrays From AC&NC

North America’s manufacturer of welding equipment Miller Electric Mfg. LLC has selected JetStor Arrays from Advanced Computer & Network Corporation (AC&NC) to protect its data.

Organization
Founded in 1928, Miller Electric Mfg is a North America’s provider of welding equipment, with customers ranging from residential users to industrial enterprises. Headquartered in Appleton, WI, Miller Electric has 2,000 employees and authorized distributors of its products across the nation.

Challenge
It generates troves of data that must be stored and protected. Daily, its SQL servers produce structured data, and various departments at its HQs create unstructured files, including business, manufacturing, marketing, sales, customer relations, and inventory data. Its legacy storage solutions, however, had outlived their lifecycles and no longer provided the performance and reliability the company required. Restoring lost data would take too long and disrupt the company’s sales and customers.

it also operates a variety of satellite sites that are customer-facing offices or warehouses. The firm stores the data created at retail sites on local servers, but for additional protection, it needed to backup the data from these locations to a central repository. Additionally, the company needed to preserve video surveillance footage that 40 cameras continuously generate.

“Miller Electric’s bottom line was it required cost-effective storage solutions with the performance to do backups and rapid restores,” said Mark Tilkens, network manager, Miller Electric. “These solutions had to be reliable because our remote locations lacked onsite IT administrators to address any problems.“

Solution from AC&NC: 

• JetStor 824iXD Storage Array
• JetStor 824JXD JBOD
• JetStor XN3002T Tower NAS Arrays
• JetStor XN5004R NAS Arrays

System Configuration:

• 1 JetStor 824JXD JBOD with 24x10TB drives
• 7 JetStor XN3002T NAS Arrays with 2x12TB drives
• 2 JetStor XN5004R NAS Arrays with 4x6TB drives
• Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery application

Benefits Realized
Working with Wire Technologies, Inc., its VAR, Miller Electric met its data protection with JetStor solutions. All data generated at its HQs are safely backed up. Should any data be lost in the production environment, they can be restored quickly to their users and applications, ensuring BC.

“We recommend JetStor products for their performance, reliability, and value,” said Scott Rauen, senior network specialist, Wire Technologies. “The JetStor 824iXD storage system and JetStor 824JXD JBOD that comprise the central repository at Miller Electric’s data center justified our faith in JetStor platforms. Together, they affordably offer nearly half a petabyte of capacity, ensuring the company’s needs will be met well into the future.“

Miller Electric continuously backups the servers at its remote sites to local JetStor XN3002T and XN5004R platforms, securing each day’s vital business data. For greater protection, the firm backups these systems every night by forwarding their data across the enterprise WAN to the 2 JetStor arrays at the data center.

“We’re pleased that we could meet our backup objectives so cost-effectively,” explained Tilkens. “Moreover, our JetStor devices deliver reliable plug and play operation, which means our IT staff avoids the cost and time of making emergency runs to a site just to address an issue. We also can remotely monitor and manage our JetStor platforms, affording us even greater peace of mind.“

How We Did It
To anchor its backup infrastructure, Miller Electric first installed a JetStor 824iXD 4U, 24-bay storage array and linked it at 12Gb speed to a JetStor 824JXD 2U, 24-bay JBOD. All 48 bays are populated by 10TB disks, providing 480TB of storage and both devices feature dual controllers. They are configured for RAID-6, allowing for two simultaneous disk failures before any data is lost. The JetStor 824iXD connects to the LAN with dual 10GbE links.

JetStor 5004R systems were deployed at 2 small remote sites. The four4bay units have 6TB disks for a total capacity of 24TB, and are configured for RAID-5. Seven larger remote offices have JetStor 3002T chassis, each also provisioned with 6TB disks. They run RAID-1 for performance and redundancy. Data is backed up to the JetStor solutions over the course of each day, and every night, their backed-up data is forwarded to the JetStor platforms at the data center for additional security. All the backups at every site are brokered the Commvault Complete backup & recovery application.

“What added to the value of our JetStor solutions is they were easy to install and deploy,” said Stephen Murdock, senior systems administrator, Miller Electric. “And they’ve proved to be trouble-free.“

Conclusion
Backup is often an afterthought, until something goes wrong. Then the well-being of the business depends on quickly restoring data to their users and applications. Miller Electric found that deploying a highly-available backup infrastructure did not need to be complex or costly.

“With the redundancy and data protection of our JetStor platforms, we’re reducing risk in an uncertain world,” said Tilkens. “They’re protecting all of our data both at our HQs and across our enterprise, and they’re doing so economically. JetStor solutions offer a terrific value proposition.“