Overland Wins a Compelling Case to Improve Law-Firm Disaster Recovery With REO VTL Disk-Based Backup and NEO Tape Library

Leading Law Firm Consolidates Data Protection to Boost Business Continuity While Saving Thousands of Dollars by Eliminating Remote Backup Systems 


SAN DIEGO, Sept. 27  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Overland Storage Inc. (NASDAQ:OVRL) today announced that Kaufman and Canoles, one of the top-five corporate law firms in Virginia, has deployed its REO(R) 9000 and 4000 virtual tape library (VTL) disk-based backup appliances and NEO(R) 2000 tape library to serve as the data protection foundation of its newly strengthened disaster recovery plan.

Kaufman and Canoles, named to American Lawyer Media's 2006 edition of The Directory of Go-To Law Firms, embraces leading-edge technologies to better serve its clients.  An early migration to VoIP, for example, led to highly efficient client communications yet caused sudden storage surges.  Storage demands outpaced the capacity of existing DAT-based solutions at remote offices, causing backup and recovery reliability problems.  Additionally, Kaufman and Canoles outgrew an older Exabyte tape library used to archive crucial data at its Norfolk headquarters.

According to James McKane, information systems manager for Kaufman and Canoles, the growing need for more robust, resilient data protection was reinforced by a close call with Hurricane Isabel, the only Category 5 hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.  After the firm lost power at one of its local offices for two days, putting critical data at risk, McKane focused on bolstering disaster recovery by consolidating remote backups while also increasing tape-based archival capacity.

In upgrading its data protection foundation, Kaufman and Canoles first replaced its Exabyte tape library with an expandable, mid-range Overland NEO 2000 tape library.  Next, the firm evaluated both disk- and tape-based solutions to handle online backups of remote data, including Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems as well as disk-based storage appliances from EMC, Quantum and Overland.  A deciding factor in deploying Overland's REO 4000 and 9000 was the versatility to configure the systems as virtual tape libraries (VTLs), dynamic virtual tape drives and/or disk volumes.

"Overland delivered the best overall value in terms of capacity, price and the flexibility to meet our ever-changing daily, weekly and monthly backup and recovery requirements," says McKane.  "The ability to set up VTLs as well as disk volumes clinched the deal."  As a result, Kaufman and Canoles replicates all remote data real-time onto disk volumes established on a REO 4000 before backing up both the replicated and corporate data onto VTLs set up on a REO 9000.  The Overland 2000 tape library then archives all backups for long-term safekeeping.

For heightened disaster recovery, Kaufman and Canoles installed an additional REO 4000 and Overland tape autoloader in Richmond, where all data backups now are replicated.  Plans are underway to relocate this disaster recovery site to a co-location facility for the highest levels of data protection

Overall, Kaufman and Canoles has realized significant data backup and recovery gains from its REO/NEO disk-to-disk-to-tape combination.  The firm's backup window has been reduced from eight to two hours while data restores have decreased from two days to five minutes.  Instead of investing several hours each week to oversee remote backups, the firm's IT team now spends less than 30 minutes to check a backup server.  Additionally, Kaufman and Canoles has saved thousands of dollars by eliminating all tape drives and tapes at its remote sites.

"Increasingly, small- to mid-sized organizations are looking for a new level of performance, including faster, simultaneous backups, near-instantaneous restores and unprecedented configuration flexibility," says Michael Kerman, vice president and chief strategy officer of Overland Storage. "Our REO/NEO implementation at Kaufman and Canoles reinforces the merits of disk-to-disk-to-tape data protection while showcasing the versatility of our products for complete disaster recovery."

About Overland Storage

Now in its 25th year, Overland Storage is a market leader and innovative provider of simply protected storage solutions -- smart data protection appliances and software modules designed to work together, affordably, to ensure that information is automatically safe, readily available and always there.  Overland's award-winning data protection solutions include the ULTAMUS SERIES(TM) of protected primary storage appliances; the REO SERIES(R) of disk-based backup, recovery and VTL appliances; and the NEO SERIES(R) and ARCvault(TM) tape automation solutions.  Overland sells its products through leading OEMs, commercial distributors, storage integrators and value-added resellers. For more information, visit Overland's web site at http://www.overlandstorage.com/. 

DATASOURCE: Overland Storage Inc.



CONTACT:  Melinda Hutcheon, PR Manager of Overland Storage,

[phone], ; or Sue Hetzel of HetzelMeade

Communications, [phone], , for Overland



Web site:  http://www.overlandstorage.com/ 

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