DataCore Software, a leading provider of storage virtualisation, has implemented a SAN solution that automatically provides capacity for Microsoft Virtual Server and Citrix environments at Boosey & Hawkes, international music publishers.
DataCores SANmelody solution simplifies management and operation of resources; optimises utilisation of storage capacity and opens the door to high availability data sharing between sites.
From its London data centre, Boosey & Hawkes provides IT services for over 100 staff based across the music capitals of the world in London, New York and Berlin. Boasting one of the worlds largest music back-catalogue and archive collections, and faced with annual data growth of at least 20 per cent, the company needed to find a business continuity solution that would facilitate the sharing of highly available data between sites and guarantee global availability, 24x7.
Viglen Storage Group, a UK DataCore partner, implemented an auto failover/auto recovery mirrored replication solution through two DataCore SANmelody 2.0 SANs acting as identical mirrors to ensure high availability and failover for disaster recovery. With this solution, Boosey & Hawkes were able to eliminate the inflexibility, management and administration efforts and extra costs of the direct attached storage architecture that was previously in place. Paul Vernon, Head of IT, noted, We recognised that direct attached storage had distinct limitations. Constantly resizing and reallocating disk space and purchasing additional disk was becoming an ongoing challenge. We also knew that we needed to engage a more effective business continuity solution, to allow us to meet compliance and service agreements and allow 24x7 data exchange across the globe.
SANmelody virtualises and centralizes the existing network storage and delivers capacity on demand through thin provisioning. It improves utilisation of existing capacity, and causes a dramatic reduction of administrative efforts. With two SANmelody disk servers, the system provides synchronous mirroring and auto failover for path and data, resulting in high availability for Boosey & Hawkes business critical systems such as the Microsoft Virtual server applications. It has also allowed them to share primary volumes evenly thereby achieving effective load-balancing, backed by auto recovery should one SAN server fail. And when it comes to management, Paul notes; The ability to have flexible management to expand disk space has been a Godsend.
Benefits:
As an international music publisher representing some of the world's best-known composers, owning an unrivalled catalogue of music copyrights including the works of such distinguished 20th century composers as Stravinsky, Bartk, Copland, Britten, Prokofieff, Strauss and Rachmaninoff; Boosey & Hawkes have noted that storage management with SANmelody has become a painless process; with thin provisioning taking away the headache of storage allocation. They now have a high availability solution that will allow automatic restoration within minutes as a result of SANmelodys snapshot ability and have achieved the cornerstone of a larger fully-fledged global business continuity solution.
About DataCore Software
DataCore Software, a leading provider of virtualization software, fundamentally changes the economics of managing storage with innovative software that combines advanced functions and services with the agility and savings of hardware independence. DataCore's disk server software easily adds capacity expansion and centralized storage management for Windows, UNIX, Linux, VMware, MacOS, and NetWare systems. DataCore is privately held and its corporate headquarters are in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
DataCore, the DataCore logo, SANsymphony, SANmelody, Traveller, UpTempo, Virtual Infrastructure Foundation and Powered by DataCore are trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
About Boosey & Hawkes
With a customer base that spans from professional musicians, to students and leisure markets, Boosey & Hawkes catalogues range from instrumental and choral to market-leading tutor books and creative teaching materials for schools and colleges. Its production music library is one of the top independent music libraries worldwide, with archives that span back to the 1930s. Their online store sells not only the entire Boosey & Hawkes collection of titles; but over 100,000 other products from all music publishers worldwide; from sheet music to classical ring-tones. Total revenues for 2006 surpassed 21 million.
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