DataCore, a leader in software-defined storage, today announced that Disability Rights Texas (DRTx), a non-profit legal and protection advocacy agency based out of Austin, Texas, has attained a new level of agility and productivity by going virtual and software-defined with DataCore and Microsoft Hyper-V. DRTx started out on its virtualization journey by successfully implementing a redundant pair of DataCore SANsymphony-V software empowered "nodes" (SAN 1 and SAN 2) in Austin. DRTx leveraged the storage virtualization and synchronously mirroring capabilities of DataCore to prevent downtime and ensure continuous data availability for business operations.

Next, the organization added a DataCore Virtual SAN running on a Dell server, which resides in El Paso (SAN 3). Critical data and VMs are now constantly replicated to El Paso for disaster recovery (DR). DataCore and Microsoft Hyper-V now work in tandem to virtualize the physical server and storage environment, and they simplify and speed up recovery in the event of a disaster. Microsoft in effect significantly improved server agility; likewise DataCore did the same for storage. 

"We would not have been able to achieve the overall agility, cost-savings and productivity benefits without SANsymphony-V storage virtualization software from DataCore," said Carlton Whitmore, IT manager, Disability Rights Texas. "The DataCore Virtual SAN and SANsymphony-V storage virtualization platform have combined to enable DRTx to fully use existing investments and significantly increase our flexibility, portability and cost-savings to meet future needs."

Whitmore is also extremely pleased with the fact that as a Dell user he can use a mix of state-of-the-art Dell servers and older servers with different speeds and types of disk drives.

"The DataCore Virtual SAN software and the ability to use our existing Dell servers made it cost-effective and practical to set up a new disaster recovery site in El Paso," he stated, "We can build virtual SANs on lesser systems that don't cost nearly as much as the main SAN that we are using."

The flexibility and the portability inherent to DataCore SANsymphony-V enabled DRTx to save money by bringing the price point down on the overall IT infrastructure. In particular, it greatly helps avoid the recurring costs associated with having to "rip and replace" a traditional hardware SAN.

"Before implementing DataCore we got hit pretty hard with maintenance costs - or we would need to buy new equipment to replace what was constantly being phased out," stated Whitmore. "As far as tangible costs saved with DataCore, we are probably saving at least $7,000 - $8,000 a year, every year as far as maintenance fees and additional hardware costs that we no longer have to pay now that we have virtualized both servers and storage."

As a legal and protection advocacy agency, DRTx depends heavily on the case management system, Legal Files, as its virtualized case management system. This application and the case information are mission-critical to the firm and therefore it needs a reliable server and storage infrastructure. DataCore's software has seamlessly increased the speed and response times of these key systems and processes - making them more efficient and productive.

The flexibility and the portability inherent to DataCore has enabled DRTx to cut expenses by allowing the agency to continue utilizing low-cost hardware and bringing the price point down on the overall IT infrastructure. This empowerment in terms of cost containment goes a long way for a non-profit organization.

A complete case study concerning the DataCore deployment at Disability Rights Texas is available here: http://datacore.com/testimonials/disability-rights-texas.