Barclaycard US has more than 60 existing card partnerships with some of the most successful travel, entertainment, retail, educational and financial institutions in the United States, including US Airways, AirTran Airways, Midwest Airlines, Carnival Cruise Lines, BJs Wholesale and Harvard Alumni Association.

In a 24x7 world, our customers depend on us to keep their accounts current while ensuring that transactions can be processed quickly and securely around the clock, even in the event of a disaster. So when Barclaycard US decided to build out a lights out disaster recovery (DR) facility, the goal was for it to be just as reliable as one that was fully staffed.  This facility also needed the ability to cost-effectively replicate huge volumes of backup data to/from the primary data center. We turned to Quantum for a multi-tiered solution centered on disk-based deduplication  a revolutionary technology for eliminating redundant data. The result of this deployment was a 12x reduction in both the amount of data being backed up and the bandwidth needed for replication. Additionally, we achieved significant savings because we no longer needed to send physical tape cartridges to offsite storage. This also mitigated the risk associated with physical tape transports.

Data deduplication, a relatively new and revolutionary technology, has gained significant traction with enterprise organizations over the past two years. It identifies redundant files, bytes or blocks of data and stores only unique data, thereby reducing both the amount of disk needed for backup and the network bandwidth needed for replication by 90 percent or more. 

With deduplication, customers can take advantage of the better performance and reliability of disk over tape in backing up and restoring data while using much less capacity than would otherwise be the case with conventional, non-deduplicating disk solutions. This means that more backup data can be kept on fast-recovery disk for longer periods of time and then moved to tape for longer-term retention and disaster recovery. While not as energy-efficient as tape, by reducing required disk capacity, deduplication can deliver significant savings in power and cooling over conventional disk. 

Prior to deploying Quantums disk-based DXi7500 deduplication solution, Barclaycard US relied heavily on an outside disaster recovery specialist to provide DR services, which was fairly expensive. It also incurred significant costs from having to transport and store a large number of backup tapes offsite at a third-party facility. One of the objectives of adopting deduplication technology was to enable the company to manage more of our DR activities on our own and reduce our tape storage needs, which would also help cut outside costs.  However, we wanted to do all this while maintaining or enhancing performance and without having to devote more internal resources to backup and DR.

Deduplication played a critical role in enabling us to meet our goals, particularly by reducing the bandwidth needed for replication. Without deduplication, the cost of replicating data to the DR site over a network would have been prohibitive. However, by deploying the Quantum solution, Barclaycard US reduced the amount of bandwidth required by 12 times, corresponding to the amount of redundant data it eliminated from its backup process.

In addition, by implementing a disk-based solution, we did not need to place IT staff at the DR facility to manage tapes and were able to reduce overall tape usage. The reduction of tape purchases now saves us an upwards of $16,000 per month on a net basis (accounting for additional bandwidth costs of transporting more data electronically). In addition, not having to physically transport tapes offsite saves the company around $8,000 per month.  

Yes

Yes

The primary advantage of adopting the Quantum deduplication solution was the ability to operate a lights out DR site and perform backups of live servers at the facility and get those backups offsite in an automated fashion. This also enabled us to focus our IT resources on other priorities without compromising the ability of the site to serve its purpose in the event of a disaster. None of this would have been feasible without deduplication technology.

Not applicable.

As data continues to grow, the ability to store, manage and protect it in a cost-effective manner becomes increasingly important, particularly in the current economic environment. Leveraging technology to help achieve this objective enables companies to provide the same or better levels of service to its customers without raising prices. In this case, we were able to deploy the relatively new technology of deduplication to establish a lights out data center  which would not have been feasible otherwise  and save approximately $24,000 net per month.

We did have a technical challenge involving the integration of a key DXi feature with the backup software application.  However, this was largely due to miscommunication from the backup software vendor.

Securing budget approval for projects involving technology that has not previously been deployed is always challenging, and this was no exception. The IT staff at Barclaycard US had to educate senior decision-makers about deduplication and clearly illustrate why adopting a deduplication solution made sense from both an operational and budgetary standpoint. We did so by preparing an executive summary on how deduplication technology works, a detailed design showing current and end goals and various media management options along with costs and potential risks. In the final analysis, the benefits of the Quantum DXi solution were clear.

Achieved

Based on the benefits Barclarycard US has experienced from implementing deduplication, we are creating a new standard architecture for backup, restore and DR processes, which we will implement in future datacenters as we continue to grow and build out our infrastructure.

The primary users of the deduplication solution have been the IT staff, who quickly saw the value of deduplication and have been very pleased with the benefits it has provided. The implementation of the DXi and the automated offsite replication of virtual tapes has reduced the time personnel has to spend performing tape media ejections and the tracking/auditing of physical tape media, allowing them to focus on other high priority projects.