Staples Finds Easy Decision In Backup Solution For IBM System i (iSeries)

The North American delivery business is run on two partitions on a System i Model 595 server. The North American retail business is run on three partitions on another Model 595. International operations are run in a partition on a Model 570 server located in the U.S. These six partitions generate more than two billion journal transactions per day. Additional partitions on other System i servers support other Staples' strategic business units.

In addition to the billions of daily transactions, customer service representatives add considerable read-only query workloads to the systems.

Staples' revenue flows are not constant throughout the year. Busy times—including, among others, the Christmas, back-to-school and tax time shopping periods—can generate signifi cantly higher than normal transaction volumes for the delivery and retail sides of the business. No matter when it may occur, business downtime would result in signifi cant lost sales, not to mention considerable customer dissatisfaction. Moreover, the costs would be enormous if a lengthy unexpected outage occurred during one of the busy periods. Staples is not willing to let that happened, which is why it uses MIMIX HA from Vision Solutions.