OBC

Challenge

Norwegian online back-up company OBC was experiencing problems with its existing storage. The setup wasn’t suitable for bigger clients with strenuous service level agreements and its scalability wasn’t fit for purpose given the company’s ambitious European expansion plans. The team needed a storage platform fit for larger clients with increased input/output requirements that would allow them to capably offer one of the leading data backup services in Europe.

Solution

The new solution would be composed of two parts: the storage software and the storage itself. Asigra’s enterprise-class cloud backup software was selected to fulfil the software requirement before the storage was evaluated. OBC’s chief technology officer Kent Vilhelmsen said: “The Asigra software offered us the advanced enterprise level functionality we needed to increase our customer base in Norway and Sweden while also expanding into Europe – the question became, what storage would support it best?”

Gareth Dryden, product manager at value added distributor Zycko, provided the answer. He explained: “Asigra is a top end platform and requires tier-one storage. We know Huawei well and have been very successful with them in the European channel because of their value and reputation for engineering excellence and speed. We brought Asigra and Huawei together to organise on premise demonstrations for OBC’s technical team. This involved Asigra granting Huawei licenses to test the software on the storage to make sure that it could be tailored to meet OBC’s specific requirements.”

The Huawei Asigra demonstration was successful and outperformed the rival storage platform. Dryden detailed why: “The rival solution was suitable for large files but struggled with smaller ones. The Asigra solution uses hundreds of millions of small files at once, and the Huawei OceanStor series handled these demands with ease.” OBC opted for two three-node N8300 OceanStor clustered NAS units with 200Tb of usable space each for the primary data centres in Norway and Sweden, and one three-node N8300 OceanStor clustered NAS with 300Tb usable space for the disaster recovery site in Sweden. Zycko designed the solution configuration and the logistics before Huawei’s engineers went in to carry out the installation.

The OceanStor NAS has the best performance in the world according to the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation SPECsfs NFS benchmark Mid-Range Storage results and was therefore perfect for OBC’s requirements.

Value

The storage solution has already allowed OBC to step up its new business activities and it has won a number of enterprise contracts in the Nordic region as a result, which Vilhelmsen explained would previously have been unattainable: “The Asigra software places rigorous demands on our storage but the Huawei OceanStor series meets them with ease. It processes backups, restores, daily and weekly admin tasks and 32 autonomic healing processes at any one time.

This is a tier one solution and what we needed for new business and European expansion plans – particularly as the Asigra software is the only solution in the industry that complies with FIPS 140/2 – without this security standard government contracts would be unattainable.