Case studies

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THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA CASE STUDY      Printer-friendly version (PDF, 307 KB)

UBC’s Department of Forest Sciences rates EssentialServer in a class of its own

Background

The University of British Columbia has earned an international reputation due to the efforts and accomplishments of its faculty, staff and students. More than 150 faculty and graduate students in the Forest Sciences Department at the Faculty of Forestry are involved in a broad array of research projects and disciplines including forest ecology, silviculture, genetics, biotechnology, fire science, hydrology, pathology, entomology, soils, soil biology, tree physiology and wildlife biology.

The Challenge

When Norman Hodges, the Department of Forest Science's computer specialist, first came across Merlin's EssentialServer at an exhibition of information technology and computer products at UBC Bookstore he soon realized it could be the solution to his Department's storage and backup problems.

With graduate students, research staff and faculty members using PC's and MAC's, often at remote locations, and only saving documents and files to their hard drive, efficient sharing and backup of valuable documents was difficult. Important data, like theses, GIS files and bibliographies, had been lost. Norm was looking for a system that was easy to use and maintain, that provided reliable storage and backup of files and images to a central server, and that would work across various platforms. Tight budget constraints meant the benefits of implementing a solution had to be carefully evaluated to justify the investment.

Norman Hodges had investigated various storage and backup systems and liked the look of EssentialServer immediately. "I liked the distinctive appearance of the EssentialServer - it doesn't look like another PC. It's simple to use and I liked the fact I could be up and running without doubling my workload. And of course I liked the price," he added.

"After researching many storage and backup options, I recognized that the EssentialServer offered the best value - plus it is easy to set up and manage. Since installing the EssentialServer, we have a simple and elegant solution for file storage and backup," says Norman Hodges.

Other important features for the Department of Forest Sciences included tape backup, remote management capabilities and the self-cooling component. The ability to have workstations on a network sharing data across different platforms has traditionally been both challenging and costly, however, with Merlin's EssentialServer, cross-platform sharing is quite simple and inexpensive.

The Department of Forest Sciences now has a complete backup, storage and disaster recovery solution, without the need for additional hardware or software. Hardware/software integration problems are eliminated and only one vendor is required for support - saving time and money.

With the EssentialServer installed on their network, the Department of Forest Sciences' faculty and students can concentrate on their work confident that their critical data is safe and available when they need it.

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