ENGINEERING

ATLANTA, GA -- Riverwood International has installed a 28 terabyte IBM Storage Area Network (SAN) to manage the production data for its U.S. operations. The SAN is intended to provide on-site business continuity and capability for future disaster recovery. Riverwood, a global paperboard, packaging, and packaging machinery company installed a six terabyte IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server (code named ``Shark'') and a 22 terabyte IBM TotalStorage Linear Tape-Open (LTO) tape library. Supporting Riverwood's global business and SAP system requires effective management of terabytes of production information. According to Andy Knaebel, IT Director for Riverwood International, adding more direct attached storage wasn't a viable solution in addressing their immediate and future storage demands. They instead turned to a SAN area networking solution that would help increase their storage capacity while addressing critical data management issues. ``Riverwood's business is truly a 7x24 operation, which makes access systems and data around the clock a critical component of our success,'' said Knaebel. ``IBM offered a scaleable, affordable solution that provided us with on-site business continuity, advanced data management capabilities and options for disaster recovery capability that we could not have found with another vendor.'' With the help of business partner Crestone Technologies, Inc., Riverwood evaluated storage networking solutions from all other major players in the enterprise storage arena before deciding on their IBM solution. Riverwood recognized that the Enterprise Storage Server could facilitate the company's continuing storage demands, as well as provide a consolidated storage platform that greatly enhanced their storage administration and the ability to store alternate copies of the production database online in case of a database corruption. ``Crestone was instrumental in the early design of the storage environment, and we also provided the technology and project leadership,'' said West Watton, President of Crestone. ``We knew that IBM, with rock-solid storage servers like Shark and the LTO library, was the right vendor to protect Riverwood's critical production data.'' Taking advantage of Shark's advanced copy features will allow Riverwood and its application team to effectively test new application enhancements or changes with current production data. ``Riverwood had a disk subsystem installed, and were very happy with its performance,'' said Bob Mahoney, vice president of Storage Networking for IBM. ``What they were missing was the kind of advanced functionality you get with the Enterprise Storage Server as part of a SAN.'' The ESS is a groundbreaking storage solution from IBM, the world leader in storage systems, software, services and technology. Built on the foundation of IBM's Seascape Storage Enterprise Architecture, ESS works with the industry's leading servers and operating systems including Windows NT, UNIX, Novell NetWare, S/390 and AS/400 -- and with a variety of interfaces, including Fibre Channel, Ultra SCSI and ESCON. ESS incorporates such unique technology as Parallel Access Volumes (PAV). Choosing LTO meant that Riverwood could expand their storage capacity and speed with the benefit of the latest technology advances in tape storage. The LTO products are the culmination of an industry initiative by IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Seagate to create an open industry-standard format for digital tape. The new technology allows customers to use tapes and drives interchangeably from any manufacturer using LTO. For more information visit www.ibm.com/totalstorage