Novell Maximizes Storage Resources with APTARE StorageConsole

Novell, Inc. is a leader in enterprise infrastructure software based on Linux and open source. The company backs up 360+ clients on a dedicated backup network every week — 41 terabytes of data on the weekly full runs, and 15 terabytes in incremental backups during the week.

"Backing up data is just one function of my responsibility; I'm actually in the data recovery business," explained Scott Jacobson, Systems Engineer III at Novell, the architect of Novell's data retention and storage management services. "Data recovery is mission-critical to Novell's business, since it safeguards the time, effort and energy we put into all the work we do. The loss of data can mean an entire project is lost, as well as the man-hours needed to recover that data."

Challenge

Keeping Track of Storage Needs

Before deploying APTARE StorageConsole, the most significant challenge Jacobson faced from day one was media forecasting. Although the company maintains a large tape library, much of that space is already used. So the pressure to add more space — and to make the most of the space they had Ð was always on. Jacobson needed to know how much space they had, how much they were using, and how much they would need, but the vendor storage reporting tool did not provide enough visibility into solving this problem. In addition, the tool was time consuming for Jacobson, taking up several hours a week just to compile the storage usage data.

"The storage vendor reporting tool didn't show me anything I couldn't pull out and put into spreadsheets on my own," Jacobson also noted. "It fell way short of the capabilities I needed."

Keeping track of anomalies was another challenge for Novell. If the size of backups differed dramatically, it was an indication that data might be lost. Before APTARE StorageConsole, however, Jacobson had no easy way to identify these variations. It took about three weeks of development for a DBA to generate a variance report after which, these anomalies could be identified and actions taken.

Solution

APTARE StorageConsole Delivers Visibility

"We performed a vendor analysis in the reporting space, comparing APTARE with five other vendors," Jacobson recalled. "There is all kinds of information you can get, but how well is it organized? What is the scope of reports? How far can you drill down? At the end of the day, APTARE came out on top. In fact, StorageConsole set the criteria. No one else even came close. When I saw the StorageConsole demo, I knew this company had grabbed the bull by the horns, taking the data that is there and organized it into meaningful reports."

Novell deployed APTARE StorageConsole and Jacobson uses the tool for highly accurate capacity planning. In fact, Novell is planning to integrate a portion of Aptare's web-based reporting into the company's award-winning Global NOC display wall, presenting weekly summaries of backup information for various business units. The clientless portal also provides added flexibility, enabling Jacobson to access the tool from any web browser.

"Using APTARE's Tape Media Summary Report, I can more accurately trend media requirements 3 months or 6 months from now," Jacobson said. "I can see how many tapes are being used and how much data is backed up, obtain the average amount of data written to tape, and then use that information for capacity planning. I can also show management the growth curves, which helps document and justify new capital expenditures."

"With the Job Volume Summary Report, I can view by hours, days, weeks, or months to show the actual growth of the data," he added. "I can drill down on reports within reports and find out anything I need to know."

APTARE Results

Reducing Time, Expenses and Stress

"StorageConsole enables me to better utilize the tape library," Jacobson explained. "For example, I might have too many tapes in my incremental pool and be tight on the number of tapes in the full pool. StorageConsole enables me to see this, so I can move tapes from one pool and add them to another. Managing the media is the best part of StorageConsole."

"It appeared we were using 93% of our 1448 slot capacity in our tape library when I first started using StorageConsole," he continued. "In just a few months, after making only two adjustments, capacity is now at 83%. So we've actually reclaimed additional capacity and could probably use StorageConsole again to obtain a few more capacity percentage points. This capacity reclamation prevented us from pulling the trigger too early in spending funds to expand out our tape library. In this way, StorageConsole is helping us to determine when to spend, which is a major benefit in cost allocation and savings."

APTARE StorageConsole also saves Jacobson time and manual labor in cutting and pasting all the information from the previous tool into spreadsheets and reports.

"It took me an hour to compile each report before," Jacobson noted. "Now I can get the data in seconds. There were times when I would run my report three times a week Ð extracting data, preparing spreadsheets, summarizing, writing formulas. In my world, saving three hours a week is meaningful."

Before using StorageConsole, Jacobson had the DBA group develop a variance report that took several weeks and many man-hours to complete. Now he can run the Job Summary Report (by Client, Full and Successful) by pressing a few buttons. This provides Novell with real-time responsiveness to locate, isolate and solve potential problems faster.

"StorageConsole provides me with peace of mind," Jacobson confirmed. "I can validate that what I am seeing is actually true, or shed light on information I have not seen before."

Management Confidence

Novell periodically had situations involving the recovery of critical data on tapes that had been reallocated to be overwritten. With the traditional tools, it was next to impossible to determine if that data on tape had actually been overwritten, if it was past 30 days. In similar situations, however, Jacobson was able to locate the data, identify bar codes and recover the data using APTARE StorageConsole.