Case Study

Imation, a storage technology leader, was recently the chosen solution for Wisconsin’s Waukesha County government that needed to replace its aging data storage infrastructure whose dependability and ease-of-use was beginning to wane. Imation InfiniVault™ Active Archive Storage Appliance Model 30 and Model 100 systems replaced aging Plasmon jukeboxes and provided Waukesha County with a seamless storage solution integration that maintained an uninterrupted workflow. The county also saw a reduction in image retrieval times by a factor of ten.

The SituationDave Kragenbrink, Solutions Administrator for Waukesha County, administers the applications development for the county, including web development and database architecture. Kragenbrink needed to implement a secure storage system for the county’s wide range of sensitive documents, including deeds, maps and surveys, vital records, accounts payable and other financial records. In addition, he also needed to secure vital reports from the Waukesha Sheriff’s Department and various court documents from the District Attorney’s Office. The county’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system revolved around an IP/Windows architecture that utilized three Plasmon optical drive jukeboxes running an ECM data management application. Two Plasmons were used for primary storage and the third for backup. “One issue we had with the Plasmon systems was that each disk had 2.6, 5.1 or 9.1 gigabytes of space per disk. When a disk filled up, then you had to physically go into the system and remove the old disk and put in a new one—a time consuming task. The lower the capacity, the more frequently that occurred,” Kragenbrink explained. The Plasmon’s data retrieval time was also an issue. Since the drive had to be physically loaded, there was a built-in lag time of up to 20 seconds to retrieve images. Additionally, the Plasmon system had a very small upfront cache; of the more than 1 million images on the system, users could only immediately access the most recent few thousand images in a timely fashion.

Kragenbrink also expressed his apprehension that one of the Plasmon jukeboxes was reaching its End-of-Life (EOL). “Our oldest one was seven years old; our newer one was only two years old. Our concern going forward was what would happen if there was a mechanical failure with the optical drives, and how would we get the devices serviced?”

Waukesha County Solves Capacity and Image Retrieval Issues

AT-A-GLANCE

Industry:County Government

Application: Business Data Archiving

Optical Replacement

Document Management

Backup and Replication

Software: Enterprise Content Management software

Benefits Realized: Cost-effective and reliable optical replacement; increased storage capacity; faster and easier data retrieval; ability to set time retention periods.

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 Challenge It was painfully obvious that the Plasmon solution was not meeting the data storage needs of the county. Waukesha County needed a reliable, secure storage solution with the capacity for effortless expansion that eliminated the need to manually swap out disks as the county’s data storage demands continued to increase. Fast retrieval times to the county’s live and archived data was also important.

The county began to search for a valid, updated, cost-effective storage solution. “I initiated a conversation with Jack Lemmers, vice president of Integrated Imaging, to find a non-volatile magnetic solution to replace the optical drives without a disruption to the workflow,” Kragenbrink recalls. “The system had to be available at all times.”

The SolutionLemmers recommended the Imation InfiniVault Active Archive Storage Appliance line of products to satisfy the county’s technical and performance requirements—the InfiniVault Model 30 for primary storage and the Model 100 for backup storage. The Imation storage solution enabled the county to move away from the dated optical disk jukebox technology at a reasonable Return on Investment (ROI).

The Imation InfiniVault integrated seamlessly to the county’s system and delivered some unexpected features. “What interested me most about Imation InfiniVault is that it has the ability to tag the images for deletion after a certain length of time,” Kragenbrink said. “The images are not volatile during that period, but you can still recover that disk space after that length of time expires. Moreover, with Imation InfiniVault, our image retrieval times shrank considerably to sub-two seconds compared to up to 20 seconds previously with the Plasmon system.” The ability to set data retention periods with the InfiniVault was a significant improvement over the optical disk technology that did not allow for recovery of deleted disk space.

“The Imation InfiniVault Model 30 is installed here onsite. It reads and writes production images for the county and includes a real-time mirror to the Imation InfiniVault Model 100 that is located offsite. It’s linked through fiber and as soon as we write to the Model 30, it writes a copy to the Model 100,” Kragenbrink noted. “We also use the Model 100 for backup to satisfy our Disaster Recovery plan. Instead of taking our servers from disk-to-tape, we now backup from disk-to-disk on the Model 100.”

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

“ Moreover, with Imation InfiniVault, our image retrieval times shrank considerably to sub-two seconds compared to up to 20 seconds previously with the Plasmon system.

”—Dave Kragenbrink

Solutions Administrator, Waukesha County, Wisconsin