Case Study: Tupperware Choses XLS For Speed And Reliability

Overseeing the backup needs of Tupperware's growing data center environment, IT Architect Bill Slaughter had evolved the company's Orlando data center to incorporate two Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) servers. The servers are responsible for backing up over 130 Microsoft Windows and Linux servers.

Mr. Slaughter also opted to round out his tiered backup architecture with a large tape library equipped with 16 LTO 2 tape drives. The tape library stores all backup data, plus deep archival storage. It also houses lesscompressible weekly server OS image backups and monthly system backups compressed into ISO format. Backup tapes from the library were also routinely transported via Iron Mountain to Tupperware's Orlando data center.

As time passed, he began to notice an unsettling trend with the tape library: An ongoing spate of mechanical incidents, sporadic drive reliability issues and increasingly quirky tape failures. Despite such disruptions and their impact on backup operations, his Unix Team still managed to work around much of it and move forward with whatever process adjustments needed to be made.