ADIC Advanced Digital Information (MM)

Using solutions from Advanced Digital Information Corporation (Nasdaq:ADIC), the leader in Intelligent Storage(TM) solutions for the open systems market, the University of York has significantly improved the reliability of its enterprise backup. With an increase in data well in excess of 50 percent each year, the University of York upgraded its backup system to include an ADIC(R) Scalar(R) i2000 library, featuring integrated monitoring and proactive, email-enabled diagnostics. The result is faster, more reliable backup, lower total cost of ownership, and less time spent managing the backup process. The University of York is one of Britain's leading research universities. With 24 academic departments and more than 10,000 students, all increasing their use of electronic communications and on-line data, storage demands are skyrocketing. "The amount of data we are generating and storing is increasing significantly each year," said Robert Demaine, Head of Infrastructure at the University of York, "which means that protecting and making available our data is a constantly accelerating challenge." In early 2004, it was obvious to the University that they would have to increase the scale of their backup system to accommodate the continuing data growth. Working with ADIC and ADIC EVAR (Enterprise Value Added Reseller) Kingswell, the University's IT infrastructure team examined their long-term requirements carefully, including data growth, the increasing backup management burden, and total costs. This review lead to the decision to upgrade their backup system to ADIC's latest-generation library, the Scalar i2000. The Scalar i2000 gave them the capacity to handle even their most aggressive data growth projections, a capacity-on-demand purchase system to allow them to control costs, and improved library management features, thereby reducing administration time and increasing backup reliability. One of the biggest changes that the University team noticed involved the Scalar i2000's automated monitoring and diagnostic systems. When problems occurred in older generation libraries, the system provided a high level problem notification, the administrator called the service team, and they began to download system logs to try to isolate the problem. With the Scalar i2000's integrated iLayer(TM) management approach, the model changes dramatically. The Scalar i2000 monitors a much larger number of conditions inside the library, including ongoing drive and media status. If an issue occurs, the library's diagnostic system automatically gathers log data, correlates it, identifies specific issues, and sends the data to the library managers and the service team via email. With the Scalar i2000, problems are often identified and resolved before administrators know they exist, and minor issues can be identified and resolved before they create major service interruptions. "The Scalar i2000 makes problem identification and resolution much easier," said Darren Miller, a member of the York systems team. "Recently, I got an email from our Scalar i2000 telling me that there was a problem loading and reading a piece of media, explaining exactly what the issue was, and making it easy for me to go to the library and resolve the problem quickly and simply. If the problem requires outside help, the service team receives the same emails we do, so they can actually arrive before we call them and resolve issues very quickly." The combination of reliable engineering and diagnostic management tools has had a major positive impact on the University's IT infrastructure team. It has dramatically reduced the money and time spent on maintenance, the service team has had to replace fewer drives, there are fewer service calls made, and the staff time spent on backup is negligible. "Now that we have the Scalar i2000, the backup takes half the time it used to and the only human involvement is moving the tapes offsite," said Demaine. "Our administrators' time is now freed up so they can get on with improving the other IT services we provide to our customers instead of managing backup. With the Scalar i2000, we are comfortably on top of our backup -- it would be unthinkable not to have it." A formatted copy of this case study is posted at www.adic.com. About the University of York The University of York was founded in 1963 with 200 students. Since then, it has expanded to 10,000 students and has over 30 academic departments and research centers. From its inception, the University has concentrated on strong viable departments and teaching and research of the highest quality. The quality of York's teaching has received many accolades. York and Cambridge top the teaching league with the highest scores in official teaching assessments. About ADIC Advanced Digital Information Corporation (Nasdaq:ADIC) is a leading provider of Intelligent Storage(TM) solutions to the open systems marketplace. ADIC is the world's largest supplier of automated tape systems using the drive technologies most often employed for backing up open system, client-server networks.(a) The Company's data management software, storage networking appliances, and disk-based backup and restore solutions provide IT managers innovative tools for storing, managing, and protecting their most valuable digital assets in a variety of disk and tape environments. ADIC storage products are available through a worldwide sales force and a global network of resellers, OEMs and partnerships, including Apple, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, IBM, and Sun. Further information about ADIC is available at www.adic.com. (a) Market Share: Gartner Dataquest, Tape Automation Systems Market Shares, 2004, F. Yale, August 2005. ADIC and Scalar are registered trademarks and Intelligent Storage is a trademark of Advanced Digital Information Corporation. All other trade or service marks mentioned in this document should be considered the property of their respective owners.