Duralee Fabrics Relies on Infortrend's ESVA to Consolidate Storage Resources and Simplify Storage Management

Duralee Fabrics Relies on Infortrend's ESVA to Consolidate Storage Resources and Simplify Storage Management

Duralee Fabrics is a well-known interior design company based in Long Island, New York. Founded in 1952, the company’s main business areas are textile fabrics and furniture, with a strong commitment to deliver high-end products to interior designers around the world. Duralee continues to expand its business, including in areas outside of the United States. 

Duralee’s growth has created the need for a more advanced IT infrastructure that can help the company deal with current applications while also accommodating future growth. However, storage management in the company’s IT infrastructure tended to be complex, as Duralee’s storage systems consisted of multiple DAS (Direct-Attached Storage) configurations without the capability to manage all of the systems through a single management interface. Furthermore, the storage systems used by the company were hitting their maximum capacity levels, with no room available for future growth. 

With these issues in mind, Duralee commenced a search for a new storage solution that would be able to connect to multiple servers while featuring large capacity, simple management and easy expansion. Led by Joseph Muscarella, Duralee’s Networking Telecommunication Manager, the company conducted a wide-ranging assessment of storage products available on the market, evaluating the EMC NX4, EqualLogic PS4000X and Infortrend’s ESVA among others. After consultations with MicroWorks, an Infortrend distribution partner, as well as sales and technical service representatives from Infortrend, Duralee selected Infortrend’s ESVA E60. This solution was able to meet all of Duralee’s requirements at an affordable price point.

The Challenges: Centralize Storage, Simplify Management and Expand Capacity

In the past, Duralee used DAS configurations with storage directly attached to individual servers. Data migration was done at the file level using third-party software.

Duralee was looking for ways to consolidate its storage systems, enabling them to work with different servers. The company hoped that consolidation would also lead to easier management. In addition, Duralee needed a storage solution that could not only meet their current capacity demands, but would also be able to accommodate future data growth. Finally, data migration was an important issue for Duralee. With its existing solution, data replication was done at the file level using third-party software, and the company wanted to find a solution that was more efficient and less demanding for the host servers.

The Solution and Its Benefits: Infortrend’s ESVA E60 Offers Storage Virtualization, Easy Management and Expansion Options

Virtualization Technology Consolidates Storage and Increases Storage Utilization

The ESVA E60 supports a high-availability IP SAN, allowing multiple servers to connect to the ESVA storage array and enabling Duralee to centrally manage the storage solution. Infortrend’s ESVA E60 is connected to two servers through a Cisco 4506 switch, with both servers running Windows 2003 SP2. One is a print/file server, and the other is an application server that runs business intelligence software.

The ESVA E60 features storage virtualization technology, allowing storage space to be consolidated in a virtual storage pool. With thin-provisioning technology, capacity is flexibly allocated to different servers, increasing storage utilization. Duralee has provisioned a 2TB LUN to their print/file server, and another 2TB LUN to the application server. The company is also considering adding a third server to its infrastructure.

Storage-based Data Migration without Downtime

The ESVA E60 offers storage-based data replication that offloads workloads from the host. In addition, the data replication on the ESVA E60 does not involve downtime, allowing Duralee to continue regular business operations when conducting data replication.

Centralized Management with the User-friendly SANWatch Software

With the adoption of the ESVA E60, Duralee’s storage can now be centrally managed. Furthermore, management is enhanced by the user-friendly SANWatch software included with the E60. Capacity allocation and data protection can be completed in a few simple clicks, saving time spent on managing the storage and thereby freeing up manpower to deal with other aspects of Duralee’s IT systems.

Large Capacity and Easy Expansion Options

Duralee required a usable storage capacity of 9.6TB, and the ESVA E60 was able to easily meet this demand. If needed, the ESVA E60 can be expanded for increased capacity and performance. For more capacity, Duralee has the option to add expansion enclosures, which could add as much as 96TB of storage capacity. The ESVA E60 also features scale-out technology, allowing users to increase performance by adding new ESVA systems to the current storage pool without any downtime. Load-balancing technology will automatically migrate the existing data to balance workloads across the environment and then continuously maintain the optimized performance by evenly distributing data blocks among member systems of the virtual pool. With scale-out, capacity can be expanded to hundreds of Terabytes.

Easy Installation and Maintenance

To help Duralee with installing the storage system, Infortrend’s engineer helped to guide Duralee’s IT administrator through setting up the storage array and the first server, completing this task within an hour. The set-up process was easy to understand, and Duralee’s IT administrator was able to set up the second server himself. The user friendliness of the ESVA design allows IT administrators to quickly and easily install and maintain the storage systems, even if they are not specialists in storage technology.