Digital processing fuels storage need for SMB

"We used to have multiple LTs [linear tapes] spinning all the time doing backups; now we have Super DLT [digital linear tape] and one or two LTs. It’s great, we just change tapes once a day and it’s all we need." Another difference Korpi noticed is less drain on people resources. "Manpower-wise it’s gone down significantly. We don’t need as much manpower, but we need more sophisticated manpower resources; fewer tape-pullers and a lot more intelligent people doing new generation storage stuff for us."

Goldmann says SLI did not just address DP’s immediate storage needs but looked at the big picture. "We modelled and designed concepts, ran a pilot, and now they’re up and running live and they’re really rocking. It’s not a big site, but it’s just perfect for an SMB environment."

Goldmann says some of DP’s tangible savings include 30 percent less rack space, 70 percent less power needs, and 20 percent less infrastructure expenditure.


The future

Korpi was surprised to discover in his dealings with various storage providers over the years, that very few vendors seemed to have actually sat down and tested their own equipment.

More often than not, vendors would give him a spec sheet on their FC:FC disk array and make all these claims, but when it came down to the nitty gritty, and Korpi put forward some scenarios, most could not give him any answers.

"I’d ask about scenarios such as, 'If we’re moving 20MB files constantly on this on a random read/write, what kind of performance can I expect?' Most guys would go, 'I don’t know'. They didn’t know enough about what they were selling, outside the typical database environment, to be able to help me get the right [storage solution]."

Korpi says there are those who only see the dollars to be made from storage and it is still a black box science to some.

"Most people can tell you that a Pentium III is faster than a Pentium II, but it’s a lot harder in storage. There’s a lot of combinations of storage to get you to an end solution -- there’s SATA, FC, SCSI -- so you have all these different options and each option has at least 10 different vendors. And of those vendors, they might have poor SCSI product but other great products."

DP is now looking to SLI to help come up with answers to their archiving and data management. Until now DP has done it themselves, but it has become a monumental task.

"I call it asset management; tracking everything that’s on all the disk arrays on the entire network. It’s not so much that we don’t know where stuff is, it’s being able to get to it easily and quickly," Korpi says.

In the days where tapes were put on the shelves and you had a little book that said where it was and someone had to go and retrieve it, storage was not at the volumes it is now.

Korpi says DP does not have the resources to do that manually with the volume of film file the company is now tracking. "Every 48 hours, about 10-15 percent of our content changes. Yesterday’s latest version [of a film] is now at least two versions too late today," he says.

With digital processes, film producers can be changing the contents of the film up to five days before it is actually printed.

"So you have to have all that stuff online, available, to cater for that demand. At the end of the day a better product is coming out of it, but we’ve just got to try to keep up with them. With this process, the film takes on a life of its own and is constantly evolving."

Goldmann says storage opens the door for other, ongoing business with clients. "Beside storage there’s desktops, servers, laptops, the whole back end. There’s disk storage, backup, archiving, life cycle management, security. Behind the server there is a very lucrative, very profitable world," he says.

If only resellers ask more questions and presume less, Goldmann advocates. "The more you understand the business, the more appropriate the solution you provide. Don’t just look for dollar per gig; look at support you provide, and education. Tier one [IT providers] get it, but others could do better."