Case Study

Imation Systems recently worked with The Jaynes Companies in order to deliver a long-term data storage solution that addressed a number of challenges the company was facing. The Jaynes Companies consists of three commercial construction divisions located in four states throughout the Southwest. Jaynes is a nationally respected regional general contractor with extensive construction experience in numerous segments of the industry, including commercial, health care, retail, education, hospitality, warehouse and distribution, local, state and federal government buildings, multi-family, structural concrete and pre-engineered building projects.

The SituationTracy Utterback is the corporate controller with responsibility for accounting, financial reporting and imaging for the company. Construction companies, often awash in data from multiple sources, look to document management and enterprise content management solutions to make their operations more effective—saving time, money and space. The Imation InfiniVault Active Archive Storage Appliance is designed to address the challenges associated with retaining information, whether for compliance or governance reasons, scalability of data realizing continued growth, or financial reasons—both for acquisition and ongoing management.

The Challenge While building out its disaster recovery plan, The Jaynes Companies identified a hot site to use in the event of a disaster at the primary site and invested in EMC Avamar, a disk-based backup technology to ensure that its data is always accessible from at least one of the sites. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing increase of static data, the company was rapidly outgrowing that solution. The bulk of the company’s static data is generated from a variety of sources—accounts payable information, payroll and other sensitive documents, job-associated documents, Excel spreadsheets and project data such as site photos and legal documents. This information was kept on primary storage and the disk-based backup technology was able to protect it effectively. However, as the amount and file size of the static data was increasing rapidly, the company

The Jaynes Companies Meets Back-up Windows and Offloads Increasing Amounts of Data to a Lower Cost Solution with Imation InfiniVault™ Active Archive Storage Appliance

AT-A-GLANCE

Industry:Commercial Construction

Application: Information Retention

Data Governance

Data Backup and Replication

Software: EMC Avamar

Benefits Realized: Able to meet back-up window with continued data growth; offloaded data to a more cost-effective, reliable solution; seamless integration into existing workflow.

Imation Enterprises Corp., 1 Imation Way, Oakdale, MN 55128.3414 USA Ph: 651.704.4000 Fax: 651.537.4675 www.imation.com © Imation Corp. Imation, the Imation logo and InfiniVault are trademarks of Imation Corp and its affiliates. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. (03.05.12)

was confronted with the need to expand the EMC Avamar system. “The imaging data has grown so much that it is taking up too much of the disk-based backup solutions time,” said Utterback.

In the past, Jaynes had used an optical system to backup the imaging data, however, as Utterback explains, “It broke frequently, it was very expensive to get repaired and you never knew if you were going to be able to get that data back from it because the optical platters would get corrupted.”

Jaynes faced the decision whether to spend additional money on a larger, more expensive disk-based backup system or look for a solution that would offload the primary storage that was being protected by the disk-based solution—a system that could protect the data and seamlessly fit into the existing workflow.

The SolutionJaynes initially purchased an Imation InfiniVault Model 30 and moved the data from its imaging server directly across to the Imation InfiniVault. This allowed the disk-based backup solution to continue to meet its backup window, both now and in the future, with a reduced dataset. With the primary copy now on the Imation InfiniVault, Jaynes takes advantage of the InfiniVault’s built-in data protection capabilities to keep a copy online and automatically make a second copy that can be removed and integrated into the off-site protection workflow. “It’s a great product,” says Utterback. “It came recommended, it was cost-effective and it’s been rock solid—we haven’t had any problems at all.”

“It’s a great product. It came recommended, it was cost-effective and it’s been rock solid — we haven’t had any problems at all.”

Through this form of storage tiering, Jaynes continues to take advantage of its disk-based backup solution for primary storage. By integrating the Imation InfiniVault into the existing architecture, Jaynes has offloaded its primary storage and associated protection technologies, enabling the company to meet its back-up window. The Imation InfiniVault now serves as the primary storage for all imaging data. The integrated data protection capabilities and removable aspect of RDX ensures that the existing workflow does not need to be altered in any way.

Moving forward, Jaynes plans to use the replication capabilities of the Imation InfiniVault to automatically protect the data between the two hot-sites. Jaynes is also investigating the use of the Imation InfiniVault to help backup the accounting application data that the company produces.

Questions? Contact us at:Phone: 651-704-7777Website: www.scalablestorage.com

“ The optical system broke frequently, it was very expensive to get repaired and you never knew if you were going to be able to get that data back from it because the optical platters would get corrupted.

”—Tracy Utterback

Corporate Controller, The Jaynes Companies

imation.com