TD SYNNEX Scales Backup and Disaster Recovery While Controlling Costs

The system administration team at TD SYNNEX manages the large internal databases that contain vital product information, price lists, inventories, and sales records for the company. This team must ensure that business-critical data is well protected and that databases are continuously available.

To protect data and maximize availability, administrators back up databases locally to appliances and then replicate that data to geographically dispersed data centers. The backup and DR strategy works well. But it requires robust, reliable backup appliances that can ingest and transfer large, growing volumes of data.

Facing Performance Challenges from Backup Appliances
For several years, TD SYNNEX relied on Quantum products for backing up databases. As a Quantum distributor, the company had a strong relationship with Quantum and was very familiar with Quantum solutions. But when it was time to retire those products, the company moved to systems from another vendor.

At first, the new systems delivered comparable performance to the Quantum systems. But the company’s system administration team found that performance degraded as the company backed up more files. “Processing more files required more and more CPU power—which meant that we needed to add nodes,” says Jason Shen, senior director of system administration at TD SYNNEX. “We wanted the ability to scale without having to purchase more servers.”

Shen’s team conducted an in-depth proof of concept, comparing the Quantum DXi6700, DXi6900, and DXi9100 appliances with the existing systems from the other vendor. The results were clear. “Quantum DXi® appliances were more stable than our other systems,” says Shen. “We could continue to write more data into the DXi appliances and still experience consistent performance.”

Returning to Quantum DXi for Backup and DR
The TD SYNNEX team began replacing the other systems with new Quantum DXi9100 backup appliances. The company now uses multiple DXi9100 appliances to back up data locally and then replicate that data across data centers in California, South Carolina, and Ontario. With the Quantum remote replication capabilities, replication is completely automatic.

Maintaining Strong Data Protection with Full Daily Backups and Replication
The Quantum variable-length deduplication algorithm used by DXi appliances enables TD SYNNEX to back up less data and transfer less data across the network than with other appliances. As a result, the company can complete full backups and replication frequently—and that means better data protection.