Business issues
De Persgroep is one of the largest players in the Belgian media and multimedia markets. The group owns several newspapers and magazines. It broadcasts commercial television and radio, and provides interactive services. There is truly a massive amount of data that needs to be stored. Rapid access to this information is vital for the internal functioning of De Persgroep.

Solutions
"We received proposals from all the leading players in the disk market, and StorageTek was the party that was actually able to meet our storage requirements, " said Van Parys, Manager and Systems Administrator.

After painstaking evaluation of the various proposals, De Persgroep opted for the StorageTek D178 disk subsystem. Connecting the servers and their storage system on a storage area network (SAN), using fabric switches, makes efficient sharing of the storage capacity possible. The SAN ensures seamless integration with the existing environment and functions as the backbone for the whole system.

The media group built a second data center, where they set up an identical configuration. This guarantees continuous mirroring of the data with a view to maximum availability. Using the D178, De Persgroep can now store two times 4 terabytes of data. The system is easy to expand, with a view to the future growth in the volume of data. The fast access to information has considerably improved both productivity and speed of service at De Persgroep.