Challenge

A large Hospital System was running a complex data protection environment with multiple software and storage solutions spread across the enterprise. The organization was seeing a 2:1 deduplication rate but didn't know how to target problem devices due to a lack of visibility across their backup footprint. Without a way to get a complete picture of how disparate systems were backing up data, storage capacity began to suffer. 

Solution 

WWT used its Data Insights Tool to run analytics across the Hospital System's entire backup environment. The lightweight, low-touch software took about 30 minutes to install in the customer's environment, and WWT was able to deliver findings back to the client within a week during a Data Insights Workshop.  

Findings revealed that hundreds of terabytes of compressed database backups were being stored on Dell EMC Data Domain, which was why the organization was seeing such a poor deduplication ratio. The customer now has a priority list of clients that they can convert over to Data Domain (DD) Boost to free up more than a petabyte of usable capacity on their Data Domain system.

Generic image of Datavoss Dashboard: WWT's Data Insights Assessment provided the customer with a policy peak summary, service level details, performance metrics, and long-term retention analysis and metrics.
Example output from a WWT Data Insights Workshop. 

Results

  • Cost Savings: Rectifying identified problems related to deduplication will save the Hospital System 40 percent in capacity costs.
  • Operational efficiency: The customer can now pin down problem clients, reducing manual efforts.
  • Performance and stability: With a robust analytics capability, the customer now can proactively balance backup devices.
  • Confidence in decision-making: The customer plans to use WWT's Data Insights Tool to make future infrastructure decisions based on data.

Technologies