CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

ECX 2.0 delivers the File-Level Analytics required for advanced Data Management

Mega Online Retailer Chooses Catalogic ECX 2.0 for Data Analytics at Scale

CUSTOMER • Large On-line Retailer

INDUSTRY • eCommerce

CHALLENGE • Determine what files the company had and how they related to current operations, and understand data management priorities

SOLUTION • Provide analysis and insight of the data in the company’s NetApp environment

BUSINESS BENEFITS • Operational Efficiencies:

• Gained insight across infrastructure • Saved countless staff hours by eliminating manual folder and file analysis

• Evolved to file analytic data management • Business Agility:

• A detailed ‘Files by Age’ report identifying ‘stale data’ helped develop a robust data migration plan to reclaim capacity

• Intuitive reports exposed file level data characteristics, allowing for dramatic data management improvements

• Simplified and reduced the business risk of their data migration activities

• Cost Savings: • Achieved over $1M of savings within months of utilizing ECX

• Reclaimed storage capacity, reduced data management burden

Biggest Challenge – Insight Into Their Data

In 2015 this on-line retailer will be 20 years old. Their success over the years has led to the acquisition of other companies, which in turn had an impact on their data growth. Additionally, their long-term success and growth have driven the accumulation of petabytes of data and hundreds of storage controllers to run their business. Imagine being on an IT team that administers that much data! It is incredibly labor intensive for the team managing millions of files for 30,000+ employees across 100 sites worldwide.

Like many companies, it was the company’s policy to never purge any data. They would simply buy more storage as the need arose. The company decided that it was time to get control over the data in their filers. Due to the shear volume of data, they first wanted to see the age profile of their data in an effort to understand how they may better manage it. They approached Netapp with this problem, and NetApp referred the company to NetApp’s partner, Catalogic. This is a testament to NetApp’s partnering strategy, using the ecosystem to solve problems ensuring the success of their customers.

Within a few short months, the company had a new, critical reason to re-visit their data management when they decided to spin out some of their other successful divisions. As a result, the corporate IT team needed to understand which data belonged to whom, and how to move the right data to the right infrastructure as they moved forward. They believed they could leverage Catalogic’s ECX for this initiative as well.

The company needed analysis and insight of the data in their environment in order to get a handle on their data management challenges to drive

Catalogic’s ECX gave me something critical to my business, namely real time reports about my data. NetApp referred Catalogic to us and we have been delighted with their product and their people. Within hours of installing ECX, we were able to identify stales files that had lingered for years, all with a minimum amount of human effort. Tools like this are incredibly valuable; we are very pleased that NetApp introduced us.

— Data Center Manager

Catalogic is a registered trademark of Catalogic Software Inc. NSB, DPX, and ECX are trademarks of Catalogic Software Inc. All other company and product names used herein may be the trademarks of their respective companies.

ECX-CS-005-0215US

CATALOGIC SOFTWARE CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

Alliance Partner

operational efficiency as well as business agility. Their scale did not make this challenge any easier either.

Breakthrough Visibility and Insight: Catalogic ECX

The IT team immediately began to look for a solution that would provide the required file analytics to assess the file types and age across their large NetApp environment. The first time they saw a test report from Catalogic ECX, they were impressed. Suddenly they had insight into what data belonged where and to whom. Years of file bloat were suddenly exposed in a way that humans just were incapable of finding. From there, they decided to put ECX in their most demanding environments to see what it could do. Due to the shear scale of the environment, it took ECX a little over a day and a half to generate a similar report; however, the insight this report provided them was well worth the wait. As their IT manager pointed out, “Sure the report ran a day and a half, and that was a long time, but a long time as apposed to what? I couldn’t get this data any other way.” ECX provided the client with a centralized view of their NetApp data across their file systems as well as snapshots, SnapMirrors and SnapVaults.

Initially they implemented ECX on a subset of controllers cataloging their files and quickly assessing the data in their environment. They ran both high level and low level scans on their filers. After the first scan, within the first two hours, they were able to have a clear picture of the data in each volume, aggregates, LUNs, and vaults and their relationships. Next, the company ran a low level scan to capture all the meta-data about each file. They then produced a series of reports. Each ran quickly and provided them with an abundance of information needed to determine data value, which in turn helped them in their data management

decision-making process.

In less than two days, they had identified 90 TB of data that was greater than one year old. This equated to about 125 million files. This insight enabled them to plan a data migration strategy that allowed them to properly estimate new capacities, move the highest value data first, and better utilize resources.

Further analytics led the team to identify 69 TB of data that was ‘stale’ and allowed them to make decisions as to the proper placement of this data. Additionally, the company dramatically increased their productivity as they harnessed the power of ECX to replace what they were previously attempting to do manually. In less than three months, they were able to achieve a savings of over $1M through storage efficiencies and productivity savings. They now have a better understanding of what data they have in their environment and are able to make better data management decisions for all of their key initiatives.

Having visibility and insight of their data also allowed them to make better data management decisions. Knowing what data they had allowed them to assess its value and evaluate its data copy and data reuse needs. For example, continuing to manage older ‘stale’ data the same as their higher value data would only exacerbate their copy data challenge. The data management challenges would continue to grow exponentially as their primary data set continued to grow.

Going forward, the IT Team now has a tool to manage data growth, effectively monitoring their files and continuing to improve their operational efficiency as well as allowing them to deliver greater business agility. ECX was simple to use and provided so much value that they plan to use it on an on-going basis even after they separate the IT infrastructure.

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