Banta’s network implementation
About 80 years ago, Banta became heavily involved in content management— the company was the first to produce elementary school textbooks. OK, so what if it was lead type and ink instead of bits and bytes? Now with some 7,000 employees in 35 facilities around the globe, Banta has made a point of staying ahead of the curve — from high-speed printing presses to electronic on-demand printing systems, CD-interactive programs, e-commerce initiatives and digital content management.
In 1998, Banta execs identified a growing demand from its client base for a remote digital workflow system that would allow customers to manage their creative prepress and print processes. In response, its digital group began the implementation of B*real-time, a wide area network (WAN) accessible throughout the United States via high-speed telecommunications lines.
With hundreds of files and documents being updated or saved every hour, Banta's existing RAID and tape storage system would become incapacitated with the increased traffic levels brought on by the B*real-time network. So, to streamline the data backup and security process, Banta implemented an efficient hierarchical storage management (HSM) configuration. Banta turned to Plasmon’s M500 magneto optical storage library, for archiving from online magnetic disk (RAID) to near-line optical disc (MO) and then finally backed up onto offline digital linear tape.
To control that complex system, Banta installed a HSM software package from LSC called Storage and Archive Manager-File System (SAM-FS). The software provides reliable, high-performance file management as well as archival and retrieval services. SAM-FS automatically and transparently copies files from expensive online disc to less expensive automated storage media, and restores the files back online as needed. SAM-FS automatically manages available disc capacities at specified thresholds by clearing disc space of copied data. Working with the enterprise server and the three levels of the storage hardware hierarchy, SAM-FS provides terabytes of secure storage capacity to B*real-time network users.