Dot Hill Designs Winning Storage Upgrade for Architectural Consultancy HTA

LONGMONT, Colo., Dec. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Dot Hill Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: HILL), a leading provider of Unified Virtual Storage and SAN storage solutions, has been selected by HTA, a multidisciplinary architectural and graphics design consultancy, to underpin its move to virtualization with Dot Hill's AssuredSAN™ series of networked RAID arrays.

Based in London and Edinburgh, HTA has a multitude of in-house design disciplines and a growing number of award-winning residential and urban design contracts in place.  Its IT infrastructure supports graphic-intensive applications such as Bentley® MicroStation V8i, Autodesk® Revit® Structure Suite and Adobe Creative Suite®, which more than 100 designers rely on to run smoothly day in day out in order to serve the company's clients. Most of HTA's large volume of CAD designs must be retained for at least 20 years, and as such, data storage integrity over time is vital to the consultancy's business.

During 2010, HTA realised that an upgrade of its IT systems was needed as its iSCSI-based SAN was starting to fail; the team decided to turn to independent storage and virtualization reseller Krome Technologies to help identify the most effective solution for its planned refresh. After reviewing a number of options, Dot Hill's AssuredSAN series of networked RAID arrays was selected because of its combination of high performance, affordability and ease of scalability which, together, made it ideally suited to HTA's need for a flexible and virtualized environment.

The Dot Hill AssuredSAN systems provide a future-proof foundation for the virtual server estate at HTA thanks to their ability to scale in both capacity and performance with complete re-use of the initial investment. These arrays now host 17 terabytes of live production data on SAS drives for performance and reliability, with Ethernet providing the new data center backbone. As part of the data center rebuild, HTA re-purposed its legacy SAN as tier two storage, providing backup-to-disk for the VMware hosts using Veeam which is then archived to tape using Symantec Backup Exec, intelligent backup and replication software that allows application-based snapshots to be taken from the SAN.  

This combination has not only strengthened HTA's storage and back-up strategy; but also has improved the company's productivity. Rapid network access to CAD design files is crucial for the design teams and the move to a new iSCSI-based SAN with the Dot Hill AssuredSAN 2332 has enabled a significant improvement in productivity as Paul Leask, IT manager at HTA, explained: "With our legacy SAN, very large files were taking up to ten minutes to open across the network and that would drive anyone insane. After the move to Dot Hill we brought that down to just seconds; that is impressive by any standards. In fact I have received excellent feedback on the performance of our new SAN from many colleagues since we implemented the new systems."

The full certification of all Dot Hill AssuredSAN arrays with VMware® ESX and vSphere and its seamless interoperability with Veeam's backup software provided HTA with added peace of mind at every stage of the deployment.

About Dot Hill
Leveraging its proprietary Assured family of storage solutions, Dot Hill solves many of today's most challenging storage problems — helping IT to improve performance, increase availability, simplify operations, and reduce costs. Dot Hill's solutions combine breakthrough virtualization software with the industry's most flexible and extensive hardware platform and automated management to deliver best-in-class unified virtual storage and SAN solutions. Headquartered in Longmont, Colo., Dot Hill has offices and/or representatives in China, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

For more information, visit us at www.dothill.com.

Certain statements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical fact are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Because such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by the statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding: any improvement in Dot Hill's financial results due to sales to HTA; additional sales to HTA or other architecture firms; and the benefits or performance of any Dot Hill product in any particular environment. The risks that contribute to the uncertain nature of the forward-looking statements include: that the relationship between Dot Hill and HTA does not provide for any mandatory minimum or additional purchases and may be terminated at any time for any reason; HTA's right under certain circumstances to return Dot Hill product; changing customer and preferences in the open systems computing market; and unforeseen supply, technological, intellectual property or engineering issues. However, there are many other risks not listed here that may affect the future business of Dot Hill, as well as the forward-looking statements contained herein. To learn about such risks and uncertainties, you should read the risk factors set forth in the company's public filings with the SEC, including the Forms 8-K, 10-K and 10-Q most recently filed by Dot Hill. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date on which they were made. Dot Hill undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect any change in circumstances or events.

Contact:
Steve Sturgeon
Lutz PR for Dot Hill
858-472-5669
[email protected]

Company Contact:
Ruth Macdonald
Marketing Communications Manager
303-845-3364
[email protected]

SOURCE Dot Hill Systems Corp.