Case Study

ESC Lab Sciences (ESC), located just outside Nashville, Tennessee, is an employee-owned environmental testing laboratory that performs clean up, remediation or permit tests as mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Since the company’s beginning in 1970, ESC has grown to be the largest single-location, nationally certified laboratory in the country with testing facilities that encompass 80,000 square feet. The company has a staff of more than 250 employees and ranks in the top ten of its industry in revenue.

The SituationThe IT environment at ESC is a mixture of Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. While the front end is typical of many Windows setups, the back end contains a number of custom applications that run on Linux and Oracle. The primary storage consists of an Oracle database system that runs on an EMC storage area network (SAN).

Most of ESC’s clients are architect engineering firms required to submit to testing under EPA laws and regulations, such as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. Once samples are collected, ESC runs tests, analyzes the data, provides results and retains archived copies of the information. Since the company operates a significant amount of computer-driven, high-tech chemistry instrumentation, it creates several layers of data. ESC operates in a near-paperless environment by digitally providing instrument data, test results, and supplemental data in final reports presented to clients via the Internet. All data and reports are standardized on a PDF file format for electronic record keeping.

The Challenge EPA compliance requires that the instrument data, the lowest rung archive data that ESC maintains, be kept for up to 30 years. As the volume of this data continued to grow, it was becoming unmanageable and the backup process was becoming extremely difficult. The data had accumulated to approximately three terabytes (about 50 million files) and ESC estimated that an additional one terabyte per year would continue to be generated from this particular type of data. At this rate, the data was rapidly exceeding the storage capacity of its two terabyte LAN.

ESC Labs Cleans Up Data Storage Environment and Manages Compliance with Imation InfiniVault™ Active Archive Storage Appliance

AT-A-GLANCE

Industry:Environmental Science

Application: Information Archive

Regulatory Compliance

Primary Storage Offload

Backup and Retrieval

Software: Custom applications

Benefits Realized: Automated archive of digital records and testing data with flexibility in data placement enabling regulatory compliance.

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)

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ESC needed an archive tier to which it could offload its file servers, to create more space on the LAN and facilitate quicker data backups. The company also needed a solution that included the ability to set data retention periods in order to remain compliant with various state and federal regulations.

According to the Enterprise Infrastructure Director, Tom White, ESC needed “a long-term, powerful storage management system that would automate the process to move the data, archive it, but still have it available online—all while dynamically managing the growth through an archival system.” He was determined to find the perfect solution.

The SolutionESC considered software like EMC’s DiscXtender and other media, however, the company wanted to standardize and implement a disk storage solution. White feels he found the perfect solution to ESC’s storage needs with the Imation InfiniVault Active Archive Storage Appliance. “It provides a very nice, simple interface to the storage unit and it’s very adaptable to have the files be online or offline. It’s pretty seamless to users.”

ESC opted to deploy Imation’s FileStore Data Migrator (FDMI) software package for automating file movement. All the files and data have been migrated to the InfiniVault and the daily test results upload automatically to the database. Data is archived to the InfiniVault, creating more space on the file servers and a significant reduction to the backup window. ESC also takes advantage of InfiniVault’s replication capability and RDX disk portability. By creating two copies of the data, one copy can be taken offsite to a secure location while the other copy remains in the vault. In this way, users have instant access to the data without a need to have the media manually retrieved, like on many other systems.

White especially appreciates the InfiniVault’s user-friendly interface, the format and the capability to keep the files online or offline. He explains that “the RDX disk and its 30-year lifespan fit our needs for regulatory compliance quite well and the software complimented the product. It seems to have a lot of versatility and a lot of potential uses down the road that we may be able to explore. I can see that we could benefit from using the InfiniVault for other storage needs that we have.”

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

“ The RDX disk and its 30-year lifespan fit our needs for regulatory compliance quite well and the software complimented the product.

”—Tom White

IT Director, ESC Lab Sciences