THE ORGANIZATION
Traffic Planning and Design, Inc. (TPD) is a civil engineering firm with a focused mission—to improve the quality of life for the public through planning and designing safe and efficient transportation systems. To this end, the firm was founded in 1989 with six employees to support the design of highways and the optimization of traffic flows. They expanded their service offerings to include bridge design and environmental permitting, and then municipal engineering, traffic signal design, bridge inspection, construction management and inspection, and expert witness support for crash investigations. They often work with public sector entities like state departments of transportation, as well as with private sector developers on various infrastructure projects.
Headquartered in Pottstown, PA, forty miles from Philadelphia, TPD is growing rapidly. In 2022, they hired another 75 people and now have 250 employees spread across 14 offices in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The firm is adding more sites in these states as well as in Delaware and New York.
THE CHALLENGE
Nearly all enterprises must backup their business data for various periods of time. Few, however, confront the challenge of backing up and retaining their business data for twelve years. TPD retains files created by standard applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint of the Microsoft Office suite for a year, but it is the firm’s core business files that demand twelve-year retention.
TPD’s staff routinely use sophisticated engineering applications such as Bentley MicroStation, a computer-aided design (CAD) software purpose-built for infrastructure design, Bentley OpenRoads Designer, CAD software for designing roads, Miovision camera-based traffic data collection, and Autodesk Civil 3D for modeling civil infrastructures. As an engineering firm designing structures for public and private use, TPD has a 12-year data retention policy out of necessity which means they need a lot of storage.
“To protect against our liabilities and ensure we’re competitive, TPD demanded backup that was economical and reliable,” said Christopher Conti, Senior System Administrator for TPD. “A colleague at another engineering firm recommended a JetStor solution from AC&NC so we deployed one. After five years of flawless performance, we purchased a second and then a third.”
THE SOLUTION
• One JetStor 816iX iSCSI platform from AC&NC
• Two JetStor 816iS systems from AC&NC
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
• One JetStor 816iX iSCSI system with 16 12TB SATA drives
• One JetStor 816iS system with 16 8TB SAS drives
• One JetStor 816iS system with 16 4TB SATA drives
• Veeam Backup and Recovery software
• Cisco Meraki and Catalyst 3850 switches
BENEFITS IMMEDIATELY REALIZED
TPD has been meeting its long-term retention policy for a decade thanks to its JetStor platforms. The three devices provide 384 terabytes of total capacity and effortlessly handle the firm’s daily backups, which include such data as CAD drawings, PDFs, and video surveillance of traffic counts.
“Day in and day out, our JetStor systems deliver rock-solid performance and resiliency, making them very competitive with much costlier enterprise products from big-name vendors,” said Conti. “Twelve years is a long time to store vital data, but our JetStor solutions have proven more than up to the task. Moreover, AC&NC has provided us with responsive service. They very much stand behind their products, which gives us further confidence in the JetStor brand.”
HOW WE DID IT
TPD deployed three 3U, 16-bay JetStor 816iX chassis in their Pottstown, PA data center. The JetStor 816iX platform has 16 12TB SATA drives for 198 terabytes of capacity. The JetStor 816iS has 16 8TB SAS totaling 128 terabytes and the other JetStor 816iS has 4TB SATA drives for 64 terabytes.
All three arrays are configured for RAID 6, which protects data against the failure of two disks.
TPD relies on the JetStor SANOS management software that comes with the arrays. “I very much like how I can proactively manage and monitor our JetStor arrays from any browser, making the software comparable to higher-end solutions,” said Conti. “JetStor SANOS management application is another reason why our JetStor arrays are such a good value.”
TPD uses Veeam Backup and Recovery software to orchestrate backups. A server running the Veeam application connects to a Cisco Meraki switch, which in turn connects to all three JetStor chassis. All the connections are multiple 10 Gb/sec links for redundancy except for multiple 4 Gb/sec links to one JetStor 816iS system.
Backups are performed nightly, with changed files for critical workloads backed up twice a day. The engineering firm backs up on average several hundred gigabytes of data each day.
CONCLUSION
With a twelve-year retention policy for many of their files, TPD demands truly reliable storage for the long haul.
“There aren’t a whole lot of economical options that provide enterprise-class storage and JetStors arrays do so at an affordable price point,” concluded Conti. “I got one and it worked well for five years and I got another and then another after that. Over the years, they’ve proven to be dependable and a great value.”
ABOUT ADVANCED COMPUTER & NETWORK CORPORATION (AC&NC)
AC&NC™ / JetStor meets the evolving needs for data storage, protection, and management. We leverage leading technologies to offer high-value solutions for NAS, SANs, clouds, and hyper-converged infrastructures (HCIs). Since 1994, our customers have spanned virtually every industry, and range from Fortune 500 enterprises to small and medium-sized firms. We support environments from data centers and clouds to branch offices and remote sites.
THE ORGANIZATION
Traffic Planning and Design, Inc. (TPD) is a civil engineering firm with a focused mission—to improve the quality of life for the public through planning and designing safe and efficient transportation systems. To this end, the firm was founded in 1989 with six employees to support the design of highways and the optimization of traffic flows. They expanded their service offerings to include bridge design and environmental permitting, and then municipal engineering, traffic signal design, bridge inspection, construction management and inspection, and expert witness support for crash investigations. They often work with public sector entities like state departments of transportation, as well as with private sector developers on various infrastructure projects.
Headquartered in Pottstown, PA, forty miles from Philadelphia, TPD is growing rapidly. In 2022, they hired another 75 people and now have 250 employees spread across 14 offices in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The firm is adding more sites in these states as well as in Delaware and New York.
THE CHALLENGE
Nearly all enterprises must backup their business data for various periods of time. Few, however, confront the challenge of backing up and retaining their business data for twelve years. TPD retains files created by standard applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint of the Microsoft Office suite for a year, but it is the firm’s core business files that demand twelve-year retention.
TPD’s staff routinely use sophisticated engineering applications such as Bentley MicroStation, a computer-aided design (CAD) software purpose-built for infrastructure design, Bentley OpenRoads Designer, CAD software for designing roads, Miovision camera-based traffic data collection, and Autodesk Civil 3D for modeling civil infrastructures. As an engineering firm designing structures for public and private use, TPD has a 12-year data retention policy out of necessity which means they need a lot of storage.
“To protect against our liabilities and ensure we’re competitive, TPD demanded backup that was economical and reliable,” said Christopher Conti, Senior System Administrator for TPD. “A colleague at another engineering firm recommended a JetStor solution from AC&NC so we deployed one. After five years of flawless performance, we purchased a second and then a third.”
THE SOLUTION
• One JetStor 816iX iSCSI platform from AC&NC
• Two JetStor 816iS systems from AC&NC
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
• One JetStor 816iX iSCSI system with 16 12TB SATA drives
• One JetStor 816iS system with 16 8TB SAS drives
• One JetStor 816iS system with 16 4TB SATA drives
• Veeam Backup and Recovery software
• Cisco Meraki and Catalyst 3850 switches
BENEFITS IMMEDIATELY REALIZED
TPD has been meeting its long-term retention policy for a decade thanks to its JetStor platforms. The three devices provide 384 terabytes of total capacity and effortlessly handle the firm’s daily backups, which include such data as CAD drawings, PDFs, and video surveillance of traffic counts.
“Day in and day out, our JetStor systems deliver rock-solid performance and resiliency, making them very competitive with much costlier enterprise products from big-name vendors,” said Conti. “Twelve years is a long time to store vital data, but our JetStor solutions have proven more than up to the task. Moreover, AC&NC has provided us with responsive service. They very much stand behind their products, which gives us further confidence in the JetStor brand.”
HOW WE DID IT
TPD deployed three 3U, 16-bay JetStor 816iX chassis in their Pottstown, PA data center. The JetStor 816iX platform has 16 12TB SATA drives for 198 terabytes of capacity. The JetStor 816iS has 16 8TB SAS totaling 128 terabytes and the other JetStor 816iS has 4TB SATA drives for 64 terabytes.
All three arrays are configured for RAID 6, which protects data against the failure of two disks.
TPD relies on the JetStor SANOS management software that comes with the arrays. “I very much like how I can proactively manage and monitor our JetStor arrays from any browser, making the software comparable to higher-end solutions,” said Conti. “JetStor SANOS management application is another reason why our JetStor arrays are such a good value.”
TPD uses Veeam Backup and Recovery software to orchestrate backups. A server running the Veeam application connects to a Cisco Meraki switch, which in turn connects to all three JetStor chassis. All the connections are multiple 10 Gb/sec links for redundancy except for multiple 4 Gb/sec links to one JetStor 816iS system.
Backups are performed nightly, with changed files for critical workloads backed up twice a day. The engineering firm backs up on average several hundred gigabytes of data each day.
CONCLUSION
With a twelve-year retention policy for many of their files, TPD demands truly reliable storage for the long haul.
“There aren’t a whole lot of economical options that provide enterprise-class storage and JetStors arrays do so at an affordable price point,” concluded Conti. “I got one and it worked well for five years and I got another and then another after that. Over the years, they’ve proven to be dependable and a great value.”
ABOUT ADVANCED COMPUTER & NETWORK CORPORATION (AC&NC)
AC&NC™ / JetStor meets the evolving needs for data storage, protection, and management. We leverage leading technologies to offer high-value solutions for NAS, SANs, clouds, and hyper-converged infrastructures (HCIs). Since 1994, our customers have spanned virtually every industry, and range from Fortune 500 enterprises to small and medium-sized firms. We support environments from data centers and clouds to branch offices and remote sites.