The Salvation Army Gets A Helping Hand From Hipskind And Quantum To Protect Its Rapidly Growing Data, Onsite And Offsite

For years, Hipskind provided The Salvation Army with disk arrays and tape for their data backup needs. However, as time has changed, their security and technology needs have grown.

Now The Salvation Army uses Hipskind's QSafe, a comprehensive backup program that allows them to replicate data offsite and have an emergency backup in the cloud. It is built with Quantum's line of DXi®-Series products and utilizes Quantum's data deduplication technology to reduce average disk-space requirements by 90 percent or more, helping to further reduce costs and complexity.

Increasing Virtualized Environment

As The Salvation Army’s Information Technology team transitioned to a highly virtualized server environment and watched their data grow, they needed help making sure that they could protect their data. Several factors were critical to them: protecting data from local file losses, ensuring fast recovery even in the case of large-scale equipment or site damage, and keeping the process simple.

“One of the challenges that face all IT shops is how to protect their data,” explains Everett Jordan, The Salvation Army’s Assistant IT Director. In The Salvation Army’s case, they went to reseller, storage specialist, and managed services provider Hipskind Technology Solutions Group to find a solution that would keep their data safe economically and at the same time simplify their overall workflow.

Trust Onsite and Offsite

The solution that Hipskind implemented leveraged Quantum’s deduplication technology, and an innovative cloud service, QSafe. The basic configuration puts a Quantum DXi appliance at The Salvation Army’s data center where local backups are deduplicated and stored on disk. Then, to provide a second layer of protection, the local DXi replicates deduplicated data offsite to another DXi in Hipskind’s data center, the QSafe cloud. Day-to-day lost files are recovered quickly from the local DXi; larger-scale losses are restored from QSafe.

When Hipskind planned its cloud offering, “we went out and actually looked at every deduplication appliance on the market,” explains Wally Lang, Hipskind’s General Manager. “We chose Quantum for several reasons, but the primary one is the elegance of their deduplication algorithm. It’s variable-length, which makes the deduplication capabilities much greater than standard block-level. That allows us to store more data in a smaller space at the customer site and we're replicating less data over the wire.”

“QSafe uses an OPEX model, so there’s no capital investment on the customer’s part,” Lang says. “But they get the benefit of absolutely the latest technology plus all the maintenance and service at a cost lower than they could procure and deploy for themselves.”

Security and Simplicity Go Hand in Hand

The new technology allows The Salvation Army to dramatically reduce administration time handling and managing tapes, creating a simpler, streamlined data protection workflow allowing them to focus on their real mission: caring for others. Plus, military-grade, hardware-based AES 256-bit encryption at-rest and in-flight provides The Salvation Army security without sacrificing performance.

“We want to be sure that we are taking care of The Salvation Army so that if a disaster should strike them, that they can still help those in need and accomplish their mission,” explains Jerry Scola, Hipskind TSG.

“QSafe is a critical part of our environment,” continues Jordan, “and it’s not only critical but it’s easy to work with and you don’t often see those two things go hand in hand. The configuration, schedules, and simplicity are just fantastic,” says Jordan.