StorMagic Helps Oxford University Increase Data Protection

Business Wire, Sept 25, 2007

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- StorMagic, a fast-growing developer of storage management software, today announced that the Faculty of Mediaeval and Modern Languages and the Linguistics Faculty at Oxford University has started deploying its storage management software in order to increase data protection across these units. The StorMagic software is being deployed to manage a 12-bay Fibrenetix RAID solution populated with six 500GB Hitachi SATA hard disk drives (3TB of raw data formatted to 2TB of data in a RAID 6 configuration).

Oxford University counts more than 130 nationalities among its student population of over 18,000, and together, the two faculties employ a staff of nearly 250 and count more than 100 post-graduate students.

"We knew that finding an affordable solution that could work seamlessly in a Netware environment and that would effectively transition us to a networked storage model while giving us reliability, support, and ease of use was going to be a challenge. Like most educational establishments, for us, money is not a bottomless pit," said Jon Edwards, an IT Officer in the Faculty of Mediaeval and Modern Languages and the Linguistics Faculty at Oxford University, who will be using StorMagic for these two faculties with more than 350 staff and students.

Before the deployment of the StorMagic software, in order to protect their data, the IT team responsible for the two groups above backed up multiple servers' storage, at the time directly attached, to a central location every night. Now, all file storage is being moved onto the RAID solution to be managed by the StorMagic software. Future-proof scalability is ensured by the extra bays, which will be populated as the need for increased capacity grows.

"Our servers and direct-attach storage infrastructure were dated and we wanted to deploy a cost-effective, network-based data protection solution that would work with our Novell and Linux servers," continued Edwards. "The development team was flexible, they listened to our feedback and incorporated it into the web-based user interface."

StorMagic is an iSCSI-based solution built from the ground up for SMBs and includes features such as data migration, replication, and consolidation to allow users to share, manage and protect data even with limited IT resources and no storage expertise. Differently from other storage management software products currently available, StorMagic is well within financial reach of SMBs and yet does not compromise on performance or capabilities.

"Although requiring performance, interoperability and scalability like most organizations, educational institutions have traditionally faced the double challenge of limited human and financial resources in the IT department," said Hans O'Sullivan, CEO of StorMagic and former founder of Eurologic and Elipsan, both acquired by Adaptec. "As one of the most prestigious educational establishments in the world, Oxford University is expected to provide its students and staff with the best service across the board, be it quality of teaching or level of data protection. I am thrilled to say that StorMagic has helped them meet one of those expectations."

Through the StorMagic solution, storage volumes are consolidated into a single pool to simplify capacity management and allocation. The software enables users to monitor and balance physical storage resources to ensure maximum utilisation rates. Thanks to the web-based interface, users can manage the storage either locally and remotely, thus dispensing with the need for on-site resource administration. The StorMagic software supports Windows, as well as Novell NetWare, Linux (RedHat, SuSE), and Mac OS X.

About StorMagic

StorMagic is a fast-growing provider of cost-effective storage management software solutions that automate and centralize the management of existing storage resources of small and medium organizations. With an executive team of storage veterans from companies such as Adaptec, Xiotech, and Seagate, the company has brought to market an easy-to-use and highly reliable software with superior data management and migration capabilities, helping organizations protect and manage their mission-critical data. StorMagic has offices in Bristol, United Kingdom, and Bloomington, Minn. For more information, please call (800) 517-5282 or visit www.stormagic.com.