Customer suCCess

swapDrive using symantec solutions to optimally manage 42 Petabytes of Data

By far the world’s largest software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of data storage solutions, SwapDrive (now part of Symantec) serves 10 million active users and manages more than 42 petabytes of data. Symantec acquired SwapDrive in 2008, but even before the acquisition, SwapDrive relied on Symantec storage management and server clustering technologies to reduce hardware costs by up to 80 percent, minimize downtime for customers, and help IT staff manage ever-accelerating data growth.

skyrocketing Growth in Data Volume

In 1998, SwapDrive began offering Web-based storage and backup solutions for consumers. Over the ensuing decade, the company became the leader in its market, experiencing astronomical growth in the volume of data that it manages for customers. Its latest product release, following the acquisition by Symantec in 2008, is Norton™ Online Backup, through which each customer backs up their data to SwapDrive storage systems. Customers can then access their data via the cloud.

Business is still booming: Today SwapDrive stores more than 42 petabytes of data for 10 million active customers. The company also licenses its proprietary SaaS backup products to more than 50 software partners.

High Availability at one-Fifth the Cost

SwapDrive originally outsourced management of its servers and storage systems. By 2004, how-ever, the company decided to build storage arrays internally and bring systems management in-house. It implemented high-end hardware to ensure maximum availability for customer data, but soon began to question the cost-effectiveness of that approach.

“We started the business with the highest-end hardware we could purchase from some of the top vendors in the market,” explains Marc Wallace, co-founder of SwapDrive and now Chief Architect of Symantec’s SwapDrive group. “Then as we grew—and worked with partners that required us to provide wholesale pricing—we had to find a solution that would scale well into the hundreds of petabytes, while keeping us competitive in the marketplace.”

orGANIZAtIoN ProFILe

Website: swapdrive.com

Industry: Technology

Founded: 1998

Huge storage Volume: 10 million users taking 42+ petabytes of storage

symANteC soLutIoNs

Storage Management

High Availability

Why symantec?

· Enables use of commodity storage hardware

· Better storage utilization enables postponing of hardware purchases

· Supports clustering of GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks

· Provides better storage management and data availability

Customer suCCess sWAPDrIVe

In addition to pricing, uptime is crucial to remaining competitive in the market for on-demand software. “A SaaS solution requires high availability, not only on the writes, but also on the reads,” Wallace explains. “Cus-tomers want to be able to leverage their data on the Web anytime, day or night, so our ar-rays need to be available 24x7.”

At first, SwapDrive SAN engineers used tools within Microsoft Windows Server for volume management and server clustering. They soon switched, however, to Symantec solu-tions, which offer better support for large storage arrays and provide higher availability. In particular, they appreciated that Veritas Storage Foundation™ HA for Windows en-abled clustering with GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks.

“GPT makes managing large arrays much easier because we can create larger vol-umes,” explains Chris Saben, data center architect in the SwapDrive group. “Windows supported the GPT disks but couldn’t cluster them. We found that Storage Foundation HA could pretty much cluster anything. It was ideal for our use.”

At the same time, the combination of Storage Foundation and low cost arrays provides tremendous cost savings.

“We submitted an RFP for 50 terabytes of storage space to several different vendors,” says Saben. “Pricing from high-end array vendors was three to five times as much as Storage Foundation HA sitting on top of low-cost arrays. Commodity storage systems can be just as fast as really high-end gear. Their error-handling is not as mature, but Storage Foundation overcomes the error-handling limitations of less-expensive hardware, so it saves us as much as 80 percent over high-end array vendors.”

Zero Data Loss in Five years

Today, SwapDrive operates more than 300 “pods,” each of which consists of two 128 terabyte RAID storage arrays, and 300 associ-ated active-passive server clusters running Storage Foundation HA. The server clusters control failover for the storage systems. SwapDrive developed the pod approach to

make its vast data center more manageable.

Within each storage pod, SwapDrive’s propri-etary software performs replication between the two disk arrays. The arrays within a pod hold somewhat different data sets; custom-ers access their data from a primary array, while the secondary array might include an additional 30- to 60-day historical archive. This approach allows for the storage of more data than would be possible using a locked, “hot” mirror between the two arrays.

Failover of the servers that front-end the primary and secondary arrays is instanta-neous, thanks to Veritas™ Cluster Server, in-cluded in Storage Foundation HA. If an array has performance issues, users may experi-ence an interruption in service that lasts a few minutes but no longer. “If the primary disk array in a pod goes down and needs to fail over to the secondary array, our software will immediately start to replenish the data that was not yet copied over from the clients,”

soLutIoNs At A GLANCe

Key Challenges

• Manage enormous volume of data at rea-sonable cost

• Improve storage utilization to reduce spending on disk

• Minimize unplanned downtime to users

• Eliminate planned downtime for mainte-nance

symantec Products

• Veritas Storage Foundation™ HA for Win-dows with

– Veritas Storage Foundation

– Veritas™ Cluster Server

– Dynamic Multi-pathing Option

• Symantec™ FileStore

technology environment

• Server platform: Microsoft Windows Server 2003

• Applications: Proprietary storage and backup software

• Storage: RAID arrays from multiple low-cost vendors

BusINess resuLts AND teCHNICAL BeNeFIts

Cost savings/operational efficiency

• 80% cost savings compared with high-end disk arrays

• 1 FTE per 2.6 PB managed

• Delaying disk purchases substantially reduces costs

storage management

• 84% storage utilization vs. projected 66% without Symantec

• Over 42 PB of storage under management, growing at 500 TB per week

• Zero data loss in five years

High Availability

• Instantaneous failover for clustered servers

• Failover of disk arrays takes a few minutes, maximum

• Eliminated planned maintenance down-time; previously two hours a day

“Veritas Storage Foundation HA for

Windows has allowed us to scale up

to more than 40 petabytes, 300-plus

arrays, and 10 million users—and

we’re constantly improving our

performance, reliability, and the overall

customer experience. Symantec makes

these accomplishments possible.”

marc Wallace

Chief Architect

SwapDrive

Customer suCCess sWAPDrIVe

explains Wallace. “This way, we don’t require a hot mirror. If a primary array within a pod has an issue and we fail over, we promote the secondary to the primary, and once the old primary is healthy again, it becomes the sec-ondary and starts syncing up again.”

Storage Foundation allows SwapDrive to cre-ate and redirect logical unit numbers (LUNs) with no downtime for users. Saben explains. “Given that each pod is 100-plus terabytes, if we have a whole LUN that’s having an is-sue, the entire volume could be in jeopardy. Storage Foundation, however, allows us to handle it gracefully through a copy and re-place process. We’ve also had excellent sup-port from Symantec. On one occasion, we had a severely corrupted LUN header, which took a volume offline. Symantec support worked through the night to recreate the header and line up the LUN’s geometry to piece back together the spanned volume.”

To improve performance and availability, SwapDrive uses the Dynamic Multi-pathing Option of Storage Foundation to balance I/O across all available paths between the serv-ers and the storage arrays.

The ideal for any SaaS provider is to offer 100 percent uptime, but that’s not realistic. “With 40-plus petabytes of data, downtime is in-evitable,” says Wallace. “It’s how you recover from that downtime—how quickly and in what shape—that will differentiate you. Stor-age Foundation HA greatly increases our speed of recovery.” For a company with a business-critical mission to safeguard cus-tomers’ data, that can mean the difference between success and failure.

SwapDrive is also currently deploying Symantec™ FileStore to manage its storage. Based on Veritas™ Cluster File System, it has been optimized for file serving. This will en-able SwapDrive to effectively manage its large scale unstructured information and growing demand for capacity.

eliminating Planned Downtime

Storage Foundation HA also enables Swap-Drive to add disk space without taking the affected array offline. Previously, the com-pany’s IT team had to take an array down for a two-hour maintenance window every time it added more disk space. Although each in-stance of planned downtime affected only a small subset of the company’s SaaS custom-ers, SwapDrive was taking storage hardware offline on an almost daily basis. Since imple-menting Storage Foundation, the company has completely eliminated this downtime.

84 Percent storage utilization with minimal staff Growth

In large part because of Storage Foundation HA, SwapDrive has achieved a best-in-class storage utilization rate of 84 percent. “If we did not have Storage Foundation, which al-lows us to dynamically grow our RAID arrays, we project that we would be around 66 per-cent utilization,” reports Wallace. “As we improve manageability of our arrays, our utilization continues to improve, allowing us to defer disk purchases. Disk prices drop dramatically over time, so considering the amount of capacity we’re using, this is saving us a lot of money.”

Additionally, while storage volume has grown by 2000 percent, the SwapDrive operations staff has grown less than 100 percent, to 23 employees, over the same time period.

“Storage Foundation HA has allowed us to scale up to more than 42 petabytes, 300-plus arrays, a massive-footprint data center, and 10 million active users—and we continue to scale at an accelerating pace,” says Wallace. “In parallel to this growth, we’re constantly improving our performance, our reliability, and the overall customer experience. Syman-tec’s solutions make all of these accomplish-ments possible.”

Copyright © 2009 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec logo, Norton, Storage Foundation, and Veritas are all trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

“Commodity storage systems can

be just as fast as really high-end

gear. Their error-handling is not

as mature, but Veritas Storage

Foundation overcomes the error-

handling limitations of less-expensive

hardware, so it saves us as much as 80

percent over high-end array vendors.”

Chris saben

Data Center Architect

SwapDrive

“Layering Symantec software on

top of our commodity storage gave

our partners more confidence

in the storage solution.”

Chris saben

Data Center Architect

SwapDrive