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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Breaking News - Storage:
Grayhair Sees Big Results With 3PAR Utility Storage
3PAR announced the purchase and production deployment of the 3PAR InServ
Storage Server by GrayHair Software Inc, a service provider to leading
consumer credit issuers, publishers and insurers. Through the real-time
tracking of inbound and outbound mail across the United States, GrayHair
allows customers to cut transaction costs, increase marketing effectiveness
and plan cash flows. By selecting 3PAR Utility Storage to simplify its
high-performance, high-growth data infrastructure, GrayHair can now service
its clients faster, more reliably and at reduced cost.
With its database growing 11GB per day, GrayHair found it increasingly
difficult to scale its environment and maintain acceptable performance levels
using traditional modular arrays. GrayHair needed a broadly scalable, flexible
and virtualized storage platform--one that could deliver high performance
while reducing administrative complexity. 3PAR Utility Storage provided the
only viable solution. With 3PAR, GrayHair experienced a ten-fold improvement
in database performance. According to GrayHair, its prior HP-based storage
environment required "constant manipulation" and consumed 30 percent of IT's
resources. GrayHair now spends "zero time" managing its storage to maintain
service levels.
"With 3PAR, it's been set it and forget it," said Cameron Bellamy, president
and CEO of GrayHair Software. "We no longer have to struggle with our storage
in order to run our business, a service that helps our customers save millions
of dollars a month."
Pressing Problems
The location of millions of pieces of mail -- scanned at thousands of routing
points within the US Postal Service -- represents critical and time sensitive
information to GrayHair customers. For example, before canceling a payment due
to a potential loss, and then incurring a costly replacement transaction, a
GrayHair customer can determine if and where the original payment may be in
the mail system by accessing data obtained through GrayHair's services. To
provide this timely information, GrayHair relies on a Microsoft SQL database
hosted by an eight-processor Intel-based server. The database is subject to
heavy and continuous loading and report generating processes. Before 3PAR
Utility Storage was installed, the company experienced slow performance,
random errors, and actual system failures. To maintain customer commitments,
GrayHair's IT staff had to dedicate extraordinary administrative effort and
time.
To resolve this business critical problem, GrayHair set definitive criteria
for a new storage solution. These included the ability to simply scale
capacity and performance as needed and to reduce administrative effort. In
addition to 3PAR, they evaluated modular solutions from major vendors
including HP, EMC and Hitachi Data Systems. No system proved satisfactory
after evaluating vendors' claims and in-house testing. Then, guided by
independent test results from the Storage Performance Council (SPC-1),
GrayHair decided to learn more about 3PAR.
Total Solution After conducting an in-house evaluation, GrayHair decided on
the 3PAR InServ S400 Storage Server with 2 Controller Nodes and 6TB of
capacity. GrayHair also purchased the 3PAR InForm Operating System for
simplified virtualization capabilities. The company now achieves high and
reliable performance -- 10 times better than before. GrayHair can now meet
service levels easily and consistently with the lowest possible management
burden. Since the 3PAR Utility Storage is intelligently load balanced across
all resources, performance are availability is automatic. Provisioning is as
simple as requesting a service level. As a result, GrayHair has been able to
shift resources to higher-value or previously neglected activities.
Scaling its environment is no longer a concern because GrayHair can tap into
the massive, multi-dimensional headroom of the InServ Storage Server to meet
growth requirements. GrayHair is also now able to add independent elements of
capacity, performance, and connectivity as needed and non-disruptively. The
company already plans a 3TB upgrade.
"Databases are critical applications for most businesses, and require
significant caretaking within traditional IT environments," commented Peter
Gerr, analyst with the Enterprise Storage Group. "As GrayHair's experience
illustrates, 3PAR can turn storage from a IT management problem into a
value-add service that benefits the entire business."
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