Case Study

Midwest Drywall, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, has more than 30 years of construction experience specializing in large construction projects—hotels, casinos, shopping malls, movie theaters, etc. The company has generated more than $45 million in revenue, has regional offices across the United States and employs more than a thousand team members.

The SituationAt Midwest Drywall’s main office in Wichita, the IT Operations Center houses the company’s main servers, file servers and document imaging system. Each regional office maintains its own file server and all office locations connect through virtual private network (VPN) tunnels over the Internet.

Before implementing the Imation InfiniVault Active Archive Storage Appliance, Midwest Drywall was using an optical disk storage system for the backup of its document imaging system. The company was experiencing increased maintenance issues with the optical drive as it would continually go offline. Although the drive was replaced a number of times, the problem remained unresolved for more than a year. With access to the optical disks and a working drive, Midwest Drywall should have the ability to fully access its data, but the backups had become unreliable and the company was losing confidence that the data was accurate and comprehensive. This made for an uncomfortable situation since most of the data that was fed into the document imaging system consisted of anything and everything that was scanned and indexed from the accounting department—time cards, packing tickets, invoices, etc.

The Challenge Midwest Drywall purchased a simple disk backup solution but quickly realized the setup did not have the capabilities to meet the company’s storage needs. With the optical disk backup, Midwest Drywall was unable to perform some of the essential tasks required for managing its data, including setting retention periods. The company needed a reliable and versatile solution that also included replication capabilities so archived data could be removed to the disaster recovery (DR) site.

Accounting data and images archived with Imation InfiniVault™ Active Archive Storage Appliance

AT-A-GLANCE

Industry:Construction

Application: Document Imaging

Disaster Recovery

Data Backup and Archive

Benefits Realized: Easy integration into exiting data storage infrastructure; reliable archive and backups.

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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The SolutionImation InfiniVault proved to be a cost-effective and efficient solution to Midwest Drywall’s backup needs. The ability to set data retention periods, the accessibility of data both online and offline, and the ease of performing backups were all reasons why Midwest Drywall chose Imation InfiniVault.Also, the InfiniVault integrated perfectly with its accounting system that runs on a UNIX box. According to Rick Goehring, IT Manager at Midwest Drywall, “The InfiniVault was easy to use, reliable and flexible—it integrates easily across multiple platforms.”

The accounting department at Midwest Drywall has come to depend greatly on the Imation InfiniVault. The company houses its primary imaging content on the InfiniVault and creates multiple copies of the data. Taking advantage of the InfiniVault’s built-in disaster protection capabilities, the company maintains one copy of the data online and removes another copy to its offsite location. Midwest Drywall also plans to backup the accounting system to the InfiniVault.

Goehring values the reliability of the InfiniVault, as well as many other features—the accessibility of online content, flexibility across multiple platforms and seamless integration with the company’s accounting system. He especially appreciates the simplicity of using the InfiniVault, “Whenever we want to make a backup of a particular slot, we just toss in another RDX cartridge and the InfiniVault does its thing. It’s just really easy to use.”

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

“ Whenever we want to make a backup of a particular slot, we just toss in another RDX cartridge and the InfiniVault does its thing. It’s just really easy to use.

”—Rick Goehring

IT Manager, Midwest Drywall