Maryville U Taps Cloud To Consolidate Data Center Storage
Maryville University in St. Louis County, MO has consolidated its storage from multiple data centers and multiple campuses to a cloud-based service. The move saved the university approximately $125,000 in infrastructure costs and 20 to 30 hours per month in IT staff time.
Previously, the university used two fully virtualized and synchronized data centers on opposite sides of the campus, a backup rack on campus, and an offsite backup rack at Columbia College, two hours away. The equipment at Columbia College wasn't performing well enough, and the IT team was struggling to maintain the VPN connection, heterogeneous storage area network (SAN) systems, and dated IBM equipment.
The team looked at a variety of solutions, from self-hosting to turnkey options offered by local and national vendors. They settled on dinBackup, a NetApp-based cloud storage service from dinCloud. dinBackup integrates with NetApp storage, including SnapMirror and SnapVault, and provides second-site replication, redundancy, and overall disaster recovery capabilities.
The dinBackup solution enabled the IT team to eliminate their time-consuming excursions to Columbia College and avoid purchasing a tertiary SAN solution. According to dinCloud, dinBackup meets security and compliance requirements, provides disaster recovery and business continuity, and is faster to implement than on-premise solutions. The company also claims dinBackup can reduce operating costs by 20 percent to 50 percent.
Maryville University is a private university located in suburban St. Louis. It serves more than 3,800 students, including undergraduate, graduate, and Weekend and Evening College students.
Further information about dinBackup can be found on the dinCloud site.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].