Slumberland Improves IT Performance With SAN Technology

July 12, 2007  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Bedding on July 2007 Slumberland of Little Canada, Minn., which operates 110 stores, has improved the performance and availability of its retail systems with a storage area network (SAN) from Compellent of Eden Prairie, Minn., that the retailer has upgraded more than 20 times since 2004. The system has also enabled Slumberland to expand end-user IT services and deploy enterprise-class disaster recovery, according to an announcement issued by Compellent Wednesday. In the past, the retailer supported its retail information technology with servers loaded with the biggest drives available. In 2003, the retail information system was nearing the end of its life, and Slumberland’s IT team selected SAN technology. The initial deployment started on a limited basis, but has grown over time. “The other systems we evaluated came in different models where you had to rip out and replace systems regularly depending on the data growth (which is a) costly and time-consuming task that would have meant downtime for us,” said Seth Mitchell, infrastructure team manager for Slumberland.

The modular SAN allows users to upgrade and expand more easily. The initial deployment was a 1 terabyte SAN that has since grown to more than 25 terabytes. “We even made upgrades with a live system during business hours—a process that has been amazingly seamless for our end-users,” Mitchell said. “The upgrades have fueled performance. For example, we’ve quadrupled the number of users on Exchange and Compellent is still 70 percent faster than our old storage system.”