Wholesale Distributor
Wholesale distributor backs up seven remote locations while avoiding additional bandwidth expenses
Challenges
- Backing up data to headquarters and replicating it to DR center overwhelmed the private network
- New applications threatened network stability
- DR objectives could not be met with existing bandwidth
Benefits
- Expanded DR process implemented without additional bandwidth
- 18-hour daily replication reduced to four hours
- WAN traffic reduced by 72 percent
- ROI in 13 months
Overview
This company is the largest privately owned convenience store supplier and wholesale food distributor in the US, delivering more than 11,000 name-brand products, including candy, tobacco, snacks, health and beauty aids, automotive and cleaning supplies, general merchandise, and food service.
With nearly 100-percent annual uptime, this company ensures industry-leading, next-day delivery. However, backing up data from seven branches to headquarters, and data replication between the headquarters site and the disaster recovery (DR) site, nearly brought down the company’s network.
The company deployed Steelhead appliances at the headquarters, the DR center, two of its warehouses. The organization developed a staggered backup schedule, with backups for various traffic types scheduled at different windows. A snapshot of EMC SAN traffic is taken about every half hour around the clock, and it is then backed up over the DS3 circuit. The company then conducts a full backup of all enterprise traffic over the weekend. Sun traffic and enterprise resource planning (ERP) traffic are replicated frequently throughout the day.
Solution
- Riverbed Steelhead appliances deployed at four sites initially; four more to come
