The Belgian Post Office collaborated with NetApp for its data backup and archival. To manage this data, the post office is switching to a virtual infrastructure developed by NetApp in combination with conventional physical tape. In doing this, the post office is keeping pace with the current trend of virtualization in the storage environment, minimizing risk, and maximizing its return on investment in IT spend.

Because of the quantity of data and activity on the post office's network, implementing a more flexible system became a critical business need. After researching its options, the Belgian Post Office decided to partner with NetApp to create an archival and backup system that took advantage of the flexibility of disk-to-disk speed and flexibility and integrated with its existing tape infrastructure. The resulting system allows for near-constant availability of backed up data, more robust disaster recovery, and the ability to grow the system in the future with less overall cost.

“The Belgian Post Office had a classic need that growing businesses often face — and that the NetApp VTL was specifically designed to fulfill,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing at NetApp. “We’re extremely pleased to share this example of how partnering with NetApp to reduce backup times and increase data availability can also have a greater effect on reducing future costs and achieving broader business goals.”

The NetApp NearStore Virtual Tape Library is a disk-to-disk backup appliance that appears like a tape library to a backup software application but provides the superior speed and reliability of disk technologies. Developed to address the requirements of backup administrators, NearStore VTL solutions increase the performance and reliability of backups, simplify backup management, and reduce D2D storage costs by up to 67% through the use of high-performance disk compression.