Cracking the Case on Data Storage and Backup

Law firms and corporate legal departments are among the most demanding consumers of data. In an era of Sarbanes-Oxley and heightened corporate accountability, those demands are only increasing. A single legal case can involve literally tens of millions of files.

Now imagine you have to manage the data for not one case but thousands of cases for hundreds of law firms and corporations. That's the challenge of On Site E-Discovery, a provider of litigation support services such as electronic discovery, digital imaging and computer forensics.

So when On Site saw its data storage needs explode from 1 terabyte (TB) to nearly 50 TB in just three years, it knew a more sophisticated approach to data storage, management and backup was needed. That's why On Site turned to data storage specialist Open Systems Solutions Inc. (OSSI).

Data on Trial

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Legal cases today can involve dizzying amounts of data. Defendants must sometimes turn over millions of relevant documents. Law firms and corporate legal departments increasingly rely on litigation support providers such as On Site that specialize in the discovery process.

With data storage demand rapidly outpacing capacity, On Site's reputation was at stake. What's more, it was taking longer for the company to complete data backups -- a crucial step in protecting its mission-critical information. "Our biggest problem was scalability," says Jeff Fehrman, Director of Information Technology for On Site, "because our storage needs can grow so quickly. We needed a solution that could grow with us."

Order in the Storage

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On Site worked with OSSI to analyze its data storage needs. The challenge was to develop a solution that not only met its immediate requirements but also could accommodate growing demands over the next 12 to 24 months.

OSSI installed StorageTek FlexLine disk subsystems at On Site's headquarters and other locations throughout the United States. High-speed networks of shared disk devices, the SANs make all the storage devices available to all the servers on the local-area network.

The final step was to identify a solution that would allow On Site to back up its data quickly. OSSI met this challenge by installing and integrating a CommVault QiNetix Galaxy Backup & Recovery system. The solution provides fast and reliable data backup in On Site's heterogeneous environment.

Friend of the Court

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The results were dramatic: a 400 percent reduction in backup times, from five days to under 24 hours. What's more, OSSI gave On Site a flexible, scalable storage environment. "Any one of our client's cases can grow to involve multiple terabytes," Fehrman says.

On Site is continuing that relationship as it works with OSSI to develop a solution for information life-cycle management (ILM). ILM can maintain the bulk of On Site's data on lower-cost media, dynamically copying the data to fast disks as needed. "OSSI has been instrumental in helping us with our storage and backup needs," Fehrman concludes. "The solutions provided by OSSI allow us to achieve performance and capacity increases whenever we need them. And that allows us to respond quickly to meet the needs of our customers." Case closed.