Storage | News

Indiana Wesleyan University Implements Cloud Storage Solution

• By Leila Meyer
• 07/16/13

Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) has replaced its legacy tape-based backup system with a cloud-based storage solution for improved reliability and scalability.

The university's old tape-based backup system was overloaded and often had problems with stuck tapes or failing drives. Backups could take days to complete and move off site, during which time critical information was at risk of being lost in case of an onsite disaster.

The university worked with MMY Consulting to implement a new offsite data protection strategy, and the new system it uses is the TwinStrata CloudArray to replicate its data offsite in the Nirvanix cloud. According to information on TwinStrata's site, the CloudArray is a cloud-based data storage gateway that integrates cloud storage into IT infrastructure.

The system has much larger capacity than the university's legacy one, so it can back up and protect more data. It has also improved IWU's data recovery process, according to the company. In the past, staff would have to identify the right tape, locate it offsite, transport it back to campus, and reserve system time for the tape drives to restore the data. With the new system, the data recovery process is almost instantaneous, especially 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 at IWU. "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."

Indiana Wesleyan University is a private, Christian, liberal arts university located in Marion, IN. It serves nearly 16,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

Further information about the TwinStrata CloudArray can be found on TwinStrata's site.