SUNNYVALE, CA — (Marketwired) — 12/09/14 — , the company reimagining storage, today announced that Hunger Task Force (HTF), a non-profit food bank in Wisconsin, has chosen ® for its all-in-one primary, backup and disaster-recovery storage solution. OneBlox–s continuous data protection (CDP) capabilities enable HTF to recover any data in a matter of seconds. The company is also using the appliance as a backup and recovery target with Unitrends and for offsite storage replication for disaster recovery.
Previously, HTF was burdened with an aging Windows server infrastructure using internal storage that required forklift upgrades, provided poor version control and was plagued by performance and reliability issues that did not meet the high level of availability required to fulfill expectations. This impaired HTF–s business agility. With OneBlox, HTF employees now have the capability to effortlessly and instantly recover data on a granular level. Additionally, the integration between Unitrends and OneBlox ensures the protection of all servers and mission critical applications. Since deployment, HTF has eliminated the need for tape and hard drive backups as well as the need for rotating backup media offsite to comply with disaster recovery and contingency policies.
Founded in 1974, HTF works to prevent hunger and malnutrition by providing food to people in need today and by promoting social policies to achieve a hunger-free community for tomorrow. The non-profit–s aging Windows server could not meet its business requirements. Time-consuming backups interrupted business and led to downtime for storage management tasks. Backups were unreliable and could not eliminate the 24-hour recovery point objective (RPO) HTF required. The company needed an enterprise-grade storage solution that could provide primary and backup storage and would enable it to add storage capacity seamlessly at any time. HTF also needed offsite disaster recovery capable of providing a rapid recovery time objective (RTO).
“With our Windows servers we were running into all kinds of data retention issues. For example, one of our logistics managers worked all day on a document, and when his computer crashed he lost everything,” said Gary Zajc, associate director at Hunger Task Force. “With OneBlox, he could have just looked for the last saved version of the file and recovered it, a process that takes seconds. Now with OneBlox we have the flexibility to grow our storage as needed, which works well with our budget. Exablox–s off-site replication gives us incredible peace of mind, as our records make it possible for us to get the necessary political support to identify and send food to families in need.”
HTF replaced its Windows server with two OneBlox storage appliances, one for on-premise storage and the other to use as an off-site replication target. The on-premise appliance serves as a target for Unitrends Enterprise Backup (a Unitrends VMware vSphere virtual appliance) to protect applications running in VMware; it also acts as primary storage for file-serving needs. The device has continuous data protection (CDP) locally, and all data is replicated off-site across a WAN for disaster recovery. This eliminates the use of tapes, which delays recovery times.
“We–re pleased to team with Exablox in providing HTF an enterprise-class backup solution for their virtual environment that provides not only backup but archiving, instant recovery, granular recovery while dramatically reducing the RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective), enabling HTF to meet their need for business continuity” said Dr. Mark Campbell, Chief Strategy Officer at Unitrends. “At Unitrends, we believe in enabling our customers to –Play IT Safe– — we are both proud and excited to be able to work together with Exablox to contribute in our small way to HTF–s mission.”
In the time since HTF has deployed its OneBlox devices, it has realized several business benefits. The company can now add storage capacity seamlessly and effortlessly, eliminating the need for forklift upgrades. End users can directly access any file at any time, and in the event of hardware failure or inadvertent deletion, OneBlox–s built-in CDP reduces recovery time from 20 hours to a few seconds. Additionally, cloud-based service enables the management of both OneBlox from any browser, providing a higher level of storage services while reducing management time.
Exablox provides enterprise features without requiring an enterprise budget or storage expertise, making it an ideal solution for non-profit organizations that need to store massive amounts of data. OneBlox delivers a flexible yet simple storage system that enables organizations to scale performance, availability and capacity non-disruptively and with zero configuration. With enterprise features like inline deduplication, CDP and encryption enabled by default, OneBlox always protects organizations– information. The company–s OneSystem is an elegant, secure, multi-tenant cloud-based management system that proactively manages OneBlox. With these features, Exablox nearly eliminates the time required to manage storage.
Exablox is the company reimagining storage. Exablox solves businesses– runaway storage costs and information management nightmares by providing a cloud-managed scale-out object-based solution that is affordable and easy to use. OneBlox is an inclusive storage offering that combines an elegant hardware architecture and integrated, enterprise-grade software, including inline deduplication, continuous data protection, and disaster recovery. Founded in 2010, Exablox is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. and backed by leading Silicon Valley venture firms. Visit Exablox online at and join the conversation at .
Renae Cazet
Trainer Communications
(925) 271-8228
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