North America’s Leading Manufacturer of Welding Equipment Depends on JetStor® Arrays to Protect its Data
North America’s top welding equipment maker relies on JetStor arrays for robust data protection and performance. Find out how they safeguard critical operations!
The organization
Download solution PDFFounded in 1928, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC set the standard for reliability, quality, and responsiveness to customer needs. Over the decades, the firm prospered and today is North America’s leading provider of welding equipment, with customers ranging from residential users to industrial enterprises. Headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin, Miller Electric has 2,000 employees and authorized distributors of its products across the nation.
The challenge
As a premier national company, Miller Electric generates troves of data that must be stored and protected. Daily, its SQL servers produce structured data, and various departments at its headquarters create unstructured files, including business, manufacturing, marketing, sales, customer relations, and inventory data. Its legacy storage solutions, however, had outlived their lifecycles and no longer provided the performance and reliability the company required. Restoring lost data would take too long and disrupt the company’s sales and customers.
Miller Electric also operates a variety of satellite sites that are customer-facing offices or warehouses. The firm stores the data created at retail sites on local servers, but for additional protection, it needed to back up the data from these locations to a central repository. Additionally, the company needed to preserve video surveillance footage that 40 cameras continuously generate.
“Miller Electric’s bottom line was it required cost-effective storage solutions with the performance to do backups and rapid restores,” said Mark Tilkens, network manager at Miller Electric. “These solutions had to be reliable because our remote locations lacked onsite IT administrators to address any problems.”
The solution
• JetStor 824iXD Storage Array from JetStor
• JetStor 824JXD JBOD from JetStor
• JetStor XN3002T Tower NAS Arrays from JetStor
• JetStor XN5004R NAS Arrays from JetStor
System configuration
• One JetStor 824JXD JBOD with 24 10TB drives
• Seven JetStor XN3002T NAS Arrays with 2 12TB drives
• Two JetStor XN5004R NAS Arrays with 4 6TB drives
• Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery application
Benefits Immediately realized
Working with Wire Technologies, its trusted value-added reseller, Miller Electric met its data protection with JetStor solutions. All data generated at its headquarters are now safely backed up. Should any data be lost in the production environment, it can be restored quickly to its users and applications, ensuring business continuity.
“We recommend JetStor products for their performance, reliability, and value,” said Scott Rauen, Senior Network Specialist at Wire Technologies, Inc. “The JetStor 824iXD storage system and JetStor 824JXD JBOD that comprise the central repository at Miller Electric’s data center justified our faith in JetStor platforms. Together, they affordably offer nearly half a petabyte of capacity, ensuring the company’s needs will be met well into the future.”
Miller Electric continuously backs up the servers at its remote sites to local JetStor XN3002T and XN5004R platforms, securing each day’s vital business data. For even greater protection, the firm backs up these systems every night by forwarding their data across the enterprise WAN to the two JetStor arrays at the data center.
“We’re pleased that we could meet our backup objectives so cost-effectively,” explained Tilkens. “Moreover, our JetStor devices deliver reliable plug’n-play operation, which means our IT staff avoids the cost and time of making emergency runs to a site just to address an issue. We also can remotely monitor and manage our JetStor platforms, affording us even greater peace of mind.”
How we did it
To anchor its backup infrastructure, Miller Electric first installed a JetStor 824iXD 4U, 24-bay storage array and linked it at 12Gb speed to a JetStor 824JXD 2U, 24-bay JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks). All 48 bays are populated by 10Tb disks, providing 480 terabytes of storage and both devices feature dual controllers. They are configured for RAID 6, allowing for two simultaneous disk failures before any data is lost. The JetStor 824iXD connects to the LAN with dual 10Gb links.
JetStor 5004R systems were deployed at two small remote sites. The four-bay units have 6TB disks for a total capacity of 24TB and are configured for RAID 5. Seven larger remote offices have JetStor 3002T chassis, each also provisioned with 6TB disks. They run RAID 1 for performance and redundancy. Data is backed up to the JetStor solutions over the course of each day, and every night, their backed-up data is forwarded to the JetStor platforms at the data center for additional security. All the backups at every site are brokered through the Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery application.
“What added to the value of our JetStor solutions is they were easy to install and deploy,” said Stephen Murdock, senior systems administrator at Miller Electric. “And they’ve proved to be trouble-free.”
About
JETSTOR
JetStor meets the evolving needs for data storage, protection, and management. We leverage leading technologies to offer high-value solutions for NAS, SANs, clouds, and hyper-converged infrastructures (HCIs). Since 1994, our customers have spanned virtually every industry, and range from Fortune 500 enterprises to small and medium-sized firms. We support environments from data centers and clouds to branch offices and remote sites.
Conclusion
Backup is often an afterthought until something goes wrong. Then the well-being of the business depends on quickly restoring data to their users and applications. Miller Electric found that deploying a robust, highly-available backup infrastructure did not need to be complex or costly.
“With the redundancy and data protection of our JetStor platforms, we’re reducing risk in an uncertain world,” said Tilkens. “They’re protecting all of our data both at our headquarters and across our enterprise, and they’re doing so economically. JetStor solutions offer a terrific value proposition.”
Another JetStor Solutions
JetStor Brings Flash Storage to a Broad Audience
JetStor brings cutting-edge flash storage to a wide range of industries, offering high-speed, reliable solutions that drive performance and efficiency.
JetStor Delivers Vital Software-as-a-Service to the Construction Industry
JetStor empowers the construction industry with reliable SaaS solutions, streamlining workflows and enhancing project efficiency. See the impact firsthand!
Turbomachinery Company Consolidates Servers with JetStor
A turbomachinery company streamlined its server operations with JetStor, boosting efficiency and simplifying infrastructure. Explore the impact on their workflow.
JetStor / StorTrends Helps Move CSU to the Head of the Class
CSU leads the way in data management with JetStor solutions, boosting performance and efficiency for academic success.
Healthcare Customers Gain Critical Performance and Flexibility with JetStor and DataCore
Healthcare providers gain enhanced performance and flexibility with JetStor and DataCore, optimizing their data management for critical operations.
Penns Valley Area Affordably Supports Students, Operations & Video Surveillance with JetStor® Arrays
Penns Valley Area schools efficiently support students, operations, and video surveillance with cost-effective JetStor storage solutions.
