Auto Dealership Group Chooses Converged Scale-Out Storage to Handle Growing Data

Martins Group, a family-owned car dealership group with franchises that include Volkswagen, Nissan, and Renault, has seen a massive increase in the amount of data it generates. When the company’s two Windows 2008 file servers were reaching the end of life and needed replacement, it turned to its trusted IT managed solutions provider (MSP)—and Arcserve technology partner—Hampshire Business Computers (HBC).

Graham Barnes, Engineering Manager at HBC, first learned about Arcserve solutions at the EMEA Arcserve Partner Conference in Portugal in 2018. He immediately saw that Arcserve OneXafe’s converged scale-out approach was excellent for meeting HBS customers’ secondary-storage challenges. HBC has more than 30 years of experience providing IT solutions, support, and expertise to its clients, and Martins Group has been an HBC client for over 15 years.

Scalability Is Crucial

The two Windows 2008 file servers headed to retirement only held about one terabyte of data. While that isn’t a large amount of data, data consumption across the auto industry is rising fast. “As a business, we are becoming increasingly digitized,” said Ray Bunce, Group IT Manager at Martins.

“We are increasingly using video and photo content to offer better customer service and experience, but this comes at a price. The increase in unstructured data meant that our storage requirements were outgrowing the infrastructure we had in place, and we were running out of traditional disk space. We needed a solution that had enough storage for our requirements today and enough scalability to support us for years to come,” added Bunce.

This increase in unstructured data can impact recovery time during any system downtime. Initially, Martins addressed the problem by using extra storage on other servers, resulting in data scattered across the business. Martins tasked HBC with meeting the challenge of storing its growing unstructured data, optimizing and streamlining data backup and security processes, and consolidating secondary data storage.

Collaborative, Cost-Effective Approach

HBC recommended Arcserve’s OneXafe platform for replacing the Windows servers. The only alternative considered was installing another file server, but setting up the server and migrating the data would have taken at least three days. That timeframe didn’t work for Martins. “As a small business, we knew Martins couldn’t afford to risk downtime. We needed to have a solution that was seamless to install,” said Barnes.

Before the deployment, HBC had two calls with Arcserve to ensure they were fully educated regarding the solution and supported ahead of the setup process. OneXafe’s simple “plug-and-play” approach meant it only took two hours to deploy, causing minimal downtime for Martins.

OneXafe’s pay-as-you-grow scale-out model ensures Martins can easily add storage as needed. And it is highly scalable, so Martins can continue to rely on OneXafe as its storage requirements expand far into the future. “OneXafe is the right solution for Martins. Its low management requirements and high scalability capabilities mean that we can focus on what we do best—providing our customers with the best service possible,” said Bunce.

Snapshots Ensure Fast Recovery

Arcserve OneXafe takes immutable snapshots of Martins’ data every 90 seconds, protecting the company against ransomware by ensuring files can quickly be recovered from a recent point in time. As an MSP, HBC is confident that its client’s data is always protected. And OneXafe’s minimal management requirements ensure valuable IT time isn’t taken up by day-to-day software maintenance.

Both HBC and Martins say the deployment of Arcserve OneXafe was a great success. For HBC, the excellent customer service they got from Arcserve—from pre-deployment to ongoing management—has resulted in a seamless process from start to finish. “OneXafe is an industry-leading solution for good reasons. From the implementation phase to the day-to-day management, our experience with Arcserve’s OneXafe has been nothing but positive. We will definitely recommend Arcserve products to customers moving forward,” Graham said.

Arcserve Partners Make the Difference

For help choosing the right data protection, backup, and disaster recovery solution for your organization, choose an expert Arcserve technology partner. They provide you with the expertise, experience, and solutions that ensure your data is safeguarded and can always be recovered.