Anticipating its customers' increasing need for the utmost in storage management, backup and recovery, PEER 1 now provide industry leading storage, backup and recovery solutions from IBM and EMC. PEER 1's new systems, unmatched in the hosting industry, combine IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager software with EMC CX3-80 Disk Storage Array to provide a resilient, robust and complete mission critical data solution for enterprise level storage management.

The Growing Need for Storage Management, Backup and Recovery

Data is one of the most critical resources of today's e-businesses. Companies must adjust quickly to business growth, knowing that data storage will have increasing demands and must be able to function in heterogeneous operating system environments. The 24x7x365 availability of mission-critical data and applications is no longer a goal—it’s a business necessity, and it requires increasingly resilient storage infrastructures to support doing business on-demand. Additionally, storage solutions must be flexible to adjust to ever changing compliance requirements.

E-business depends on efficient systems from a hardware, operating system and application perspective. Data storage/backup solutions should minimize server resource use and should not interfere with the primary functions of these e-business systems.

Finally, when calamity strikes, expedited disaster recovery is of utmost importance.

PEER 1's infrastructure is designed meet these growing needs with an intelligent and scalable storage management solution that is robust, scalable, fast, responsive and efficient. It uses industry leading components from IBM and EMC combined with PEER 1’s expert staff in order to meet and exceed all these requirements.

IBM Tivoli Storage Management Solution (TSM)

PEER 1’s implementation of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager's (TSM) backup and recovery solution is a centralized, comprehensive enterprise level solution that makes backups and restores fast and flexible with minimal customer impact. TSM will backup all PEER 1 provided Linux and Windows platforms. Business backup needs are met using initial full backup and subsequent incremental forever backup of files, which provide a complete backup solution yet minimizes valuable backup storage space and bandwidth consumption as backups are performed, both of which lower customer costs. Costs are further minimized with TSM’s compression technology.

TSM's History
IBM boasts an early entry into the storage management market. On July 29, 1993 it introduced ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager (ADSM), its enterprise wide network storage management solution. IBM was one of the first major vendors to develop a storage software product that automatically backed up files over the network to disk or tape. After the acquisition of Tivoli Systems, IBM moved ADSM to the new systems management software group. This group continued to enhance many of the functions that define the product today including disaster recovery, hierarchical storage management, enterprise management, web based tools and exploitation of storage area networks. Finally, IBM ADSM became IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM).

Today, TSM has a proven track record and is recognized in the industry as one of the leaders in data storage management. TSM protects millions of systems and applications around the world. It is the product of choice for more than 80% percent of Fortune Global 100 companies and 96 of the top 100 financial institutions. Gartner placed TSM in its top or "magic quadrant" for storage management technology.

Features and Benefits
PEER 1 provides the most robust storage functionality in the industry today, with unrivaled data protection. The centralized, automated storage management and data protection reduce the risks associated with data loss. PEER 1 employs an intelligent backup and restoration technology utilizing a progressive incremental backup strategy, where only new and altered files are backed up beyond the initial full backup.

• The PEER 1 methodology reduces the amount of data being managed and the required storage disk space.
• The PEER 1 methodology lowers the time and bandwidth it takes to transfer data.
• PEER 1's disk to disk restorations are an order of magnitude faster than traditional restorations from tape.
• PEER 1 implements a web based management interface for easy management at the customer-level, regardless of the OS platform. These tools also empower customers to initiate restoration requests themselves if they so choose.
• PEER 1’s backup solutions provide secure encrypted storage for sensitive customer information

EMC CX3 Series

Software is only one component of backup and recovery. The hardware used for data storage has a critical impact on performance as well as on compatibility and scalability.

EMC CX3 series leads the midrange storage-array market in performance and scalability. The EMC CX3 family of storage systems is designed to provide new levels of performance and scalability. New architecture enhancements include an extremely fast (4 Gbps) network connectivity, state-of-the-art storage-processor infrastructure and high performance fiber disk drives.

PEER 1's CX3-80 Disk Storage Array has the highest performance and scalability in the EMC Family.

CX3-80 Disk Storage Array
The CX3-80 array is a fully-integrated, enterprise-capable storage solution for the most demanding user environments. Combining high-availability, performance and scalability, the CX3-80 is an ideal data-center storage solution.

Features and Benefits

• High Availability - modular, redundant design allows the system to continue normal operation in the event of a failed power supply, cooling unit, storage processor, or disk drive. All these components are hot pluggable for easy repair with no downtime.
• The CX3-80 fast data transfer rate provides increased input/output and storage-access speeds.
• Sequential Bandwidth and IO - with multiple full-bandwidth, 4Gbps ports, the CX3-80 storage systems is suitable for the most demanding environment. The high IO is a critical feature for keeping backup and recovery at peak speed.

PEER 1's Backup and Storage System - What's in it for You

The combination of Tivoli software and EMC hardware creates a storage, backup and recovery platform that is unparalleled in the dedicated hosting industry. This is a good time to review your needs and decide how you can best take advantage of this advanced infrastructure.

Backup Options - What Do You Need and How Often

To secure against accidental deletions, data-corrupting crashes, malicious intrusions and hard drive failures and to preserve business continuity, backups are a must. A weekly backup is recommended as the absolute minimum for assuring availability of data. Active servers with ongoing data and content updates (creation of new users, new data entered by users) will benefit from daily or more frequent backups. Database whose records are created or updated frequently (as opposed to read only) would also benefit from frequent backups.

The combination of IBM's Tivoli software and EMC hardware provides many choices. Backup can be done at the drive, folder and file level, and automated at different intervals. Databases require the cooperation of the system administrator in creating dump files (snapshots of the database structure and data), which can then be backed up.

Whatever the nature of your e-business, taking advantage of PEER 1's industry-leading backup and storage offerings is in your best interest. It will give you peace of mind to concentrate on growing your business without worrying how data loss could impact your bottom line Your data is safe and sound in our hands.