The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) claims it has made significant cost savings by using automated tiered storage technology as the platform for its 200,000-strong library of high-resolution images.

Provided by storage specialist Compellent, the system allows the vast majority of its data to be stored on low-cost SATA disks, with only the most popular images held on high-performance Fibre Channel (FC) drives.

As usage patterns emerge, the system automatically moves the least-accessed images to the SATA drives, and then backs up to the faster FC drives if they become more popular, so that they can be accessed and downloaded more quickly.

According to the RHS, the system has saved “a considerable amount of money” and also contributed to a greener storage solution, as SATA drives require much less power than FC drives.

Phillip Gladwin, IT security and operations manager, at the RHS, said: "It’s fast, effective and right at the cutting edge – and is incredibly easy to manage. It also offers us immediate and long-term cost savings, while helping us do our bit for the environment."

The Society selected a 12TB SAN for its primary London data centre comprising two controllers with 2.5TB of high-performance Fibre Channel (FC) capacity and 9.5TB of low-cost SATA capacity.

A second SAN, located approximately a mile away, also has two controllers but the entire 12TB capacity is made up only with low-cost SATA drives.

Server recovery times down

RHS says the SANs are also ensuring a more robust disaster recovery platform, with server recovery times reduced by 90 per cent, from 12 days to 24 hours.

Furthermore, Compellent’s Portable Volume component has cut replication times by 80 per cent and achieved a saving of £60,000 in WAN upgrades each year.

The Society now plans to connect around 30 of its servers to the SAN and move toward a virtual environment in order to ensure a more effective level of server utilisation.