VESTIGE, LTD. DEPLOYS IP SAN USING ALACRITECH ISCSI ACCELERATORS,
DATAPLOW SAN FILE SYSTEM SOFTWARE AND PROMISE SATA RAID

Top Computer Forensics Company Implements iSCSI SAN; Centralized Storage, High Performance Workstations and SAN File Sharing of Large Data-sets Significantly Increases Team Productivity

• Industry/Market:
  » Computer Forensics
  
• Challenge:
  » Replace inefficient Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) infrastructure
  » Significantly improve staff productivity; avoid physically moving sensitive hard drives containing evidence from machine to machine
  » Cost-effectively centralize storage of large amounts of computer data
  » Offload IP storage processing from CPUs to increase system performance to enable efficient handling of large amounts of imaged data
  » Enable high performance file sharing in a distributed environment to speed data analysis
  » Speed network transfers of large amounts of block data
  
• iSCSI Solution:
  » Alacritech® SES1001T iSCSI Accelerators
  » DataPlow® SAN File System (SFS) Software
  » Promise® Technology VTrak™ 15200 SATA RAID storage systems
• Benefits:
  » Cost-effective and high performance iSCSI Storage-Attached Network (SAN)
  » Centralized storage and management of large amounts of computer data
  » New infrastructure supports easy sharing of large amounts of data
  » Backup and restoration of data conducted without the need to take machines down
  » IP storage processing effectively offloaded from CPUs, freeing CPUs to focus on data analysis

"Vestige's forensic experts are called upon by attorneys who need to uncover critical computer data for use as evidence in legal cases. Testing and analyzing large amounts of a wide variety of data types to locate the relevant information is a daunting processor and network-intensive task, so we first looked at NAS and Fibre Channel SAN solutions. However, we found that an iSCSI SAN using the Alacritech iSCSI Accelerators to offload the CPUs in our workstations, a Promise VTrak storage system to consolidate storage, and DataPlow's SFS software for powerful and easy SAN file sharing provided an unbeatable price/performance solution. Our new IP SAN has enabled us to reduce the time, effort and costs in working with large, read-intensive data-sets. As a result, our forensic analysts can provide critical information to attorneys faster, and the performance in our distributed environment enables us analyze data from multiple cases simultaneously-a significant improvement over our previous DAS system."
                                                          --- Greg Kelley, CTO, Vestige, Ltd.

Business Overview
Vestige, Ltd. is based in Cleveland, Ohio, and is a leading provider of computer forensic and electronic discovery services for use in civil litigation, law enforcement, criminal proceedings and corporate policy administration. Vestige's computer analysis team is comprised of forensically-trained attorneys and computer analysts that use a variety of forensic software applications and techniques to locate both visible and "invisible" evidentiary data for use in litigation. Vestige's analysts are responsible for investigating computer systems by executing search and production protocols that protect privilege and confidentiality, while extracting, parsing and collating relevant data in a manner consistent with its client's legal theories and strategies. Combined, Vestige's principals have over 10 years experience in the computer forensics field, over 20 years practicing law, and over 30 years in information technology making them experts in turning digital evidence into intelligence for use in a court of law.

When beginning a computer forensics investigation, Vestige's computer analysis team goes to the site of the computer(s) to be imaged, which in a typical case can be from one to 50 computers or more, and sometimes includes devices such as cameras and cell phones. The team makes a byte for byte copy of SCSI drives, SATA drives, IDE drives, USB subdrives, Zip discs etc., and/or any type of media including CDs, DVDs and floppy disks. The end result is a large amount of critical data that is carefully brought back to Vestige's secure computer forensics lab to be meticulously analyzed.

Business Challenge
Vestige's computer forensics lab was based on a DAS infrastructure with multiple disparate machines each running separate forensic software applications such as Guidance™ Software's EnCase®, Paraben Corporation's forensic tools for email and cell phones, and a variety of other applications and tools for analyzing Internet history, cracking passwords and reviewing Microsoft® Office documents. Due to the large amounts of imaged data on separate hard drives, and the dispersed applications, Vestige's analysts frequently had to physically move sensitive hard drives from one machine to another when a more powerful machine was needed to run the processor and memory-intensive testing, or a forensics application located on another machine was needed. In addition, relocating hard drives was not ideal as it increased the instances of hardware or software failures forcing the analysts to retrieve the imaged data from tape and delaying response times to attorneys.

With its growing client load and increasing amount of data to be analyzed, Greg Kelley, Vestige's chief technology officer, planned to implement a centralized storage solution for the imaged data in order to increase the team's productivity. Vestige had three key storage requirements to meet: "First, we needed shared storage for the large amounts of data which needed central access from the workstations," said Greg Kelley, CTO, Vestige, Ltd. "Second, we needed a cost-effective solution that could be easily managed by the company's existing staff, and last, we didn't want to sacrifice performance in the workstations or speed in the network. We first tried a network-attached storage solution but when the team shared data over the network, speed became an issue and slowed our response times to pending cases. We then looked into a Fibre Channel-based SAN, but found it cost-prohibitive. A Web search led us to Promise Technology and its VTrak iSCSI SAN solution."

iSCSI SAN Solution and Benefits
Kelley contacted Promise Technology, and in addition to its cost-effective, easy-to-manage VTrak 15200 SATA RAID storage system, the company also suggested offloading the processor and memory-intensive tasks from the CPUs in Vestige's Dell™ workstations. After reviewing a number of Alacritech customer case studies and independent tests, the Alacritech SES1001T iSCSI Accelerator was Kelley's choice for functionality and performance. Alacritech iSCSI Accelerators maximize the efficiency of Windows-based machines running iSCSI by offloading IP storage data movement from the CPU onto a specialized ASIC on the card freeing the CPU for application processing. By pairing the Alacritech iSCSI Accelerator and the Promise Technology VTrak storage target with its hardware iSCSI offload engine, Vestige gained an efficient iSCSI network architecture capable of maximizing data throughput. "To ensure efficient workstation and application performance, we first required the intensive storage I/O processing to be offloaded from the workstation CPUs, then we needed to speed iSCSI data to and from the iSCSI storage," noted Kelley. "The Alacritech Accelerators were also pre-qualified with the Promise Technology VTrak storage system, and are the only cards with failover capabilities."

The award-winning Alacritech SES1001T iSCSI Accelerator is the industry's top-performing iSCSI controller and is the only card to accelerate the full Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator. Based on Alacritech's patented SLIC Technology®, the SES1001 enables wire-speed performance and a significantly higher transaction rate over all other iSCSI cards. By offloading TCP/IP and iSCSI processing from the host CPU, Alacritech Accelerators significantly improve host processor efficiency, increase data throughput and reduce network latency.

With the Alacritech iSCSI Accelerators and Promise Technology VTrak 15200 storage systems in place, the Vestige team sought SAN file sharing software to complete their storage environment. SAN file sharing software would facilitate the concurrent sharing of data-sets among the Vestige workstations thereby enabling forensic applications, running on different workstations, to simultaneously read and write shared files without sacrificing performance or manageability. Specifically, high-speed file sharing would ensure that Vestige's forensic analysts could efficiently work on several cases in parallel as well as spread workloads of large cases across multiple workstations.

Kelley researched several file sharing alternatives and selected the DataPlow SAN File System (SFS) software because of its superb performance, scalability, and manageability. DataPlow SFS outperforms server-based, NAS-based, and other SAN-based file sharing approaches while creating data storage environments that are easier to manage and less costly to expand than conventional technologies. "File transfers in our IP-based Gigabit network are nearly as fast as using direct-attached hard drives but take place in the shared environment," noted Kelley. "Combined with the easy management and cost-effective price, DataPlow SFS is the ideal file sharing solution for our new iSCSI SAN."

"By installing Alacritech's iSCSI Accelerators in the workstations connected to the Promise VTrak 15200 storage system, and configuring it with DataPlow's SAN File System software, we were able to quickly and easily implement a high-performance, high-capacity IP SAN storage system that can easily scale simply by adding standards-based components," added Kelley. "We've gained an immediate return-on-investment by significantly increasing our forensic experts' productivity, and all for a fraction of the price of alternative solutions-ultimately, the attorneys we work with, and their clients, are the beneficiaries."

System Configuration:

Alacritech SES1001 Accelerators offer the industry's best performing iSCSI solution for your Windows-based Servers when used with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator. Combined with the Promise VTrak 15200 iSCSI SATA RAID storage system, Alacritech brings the best iSCSI connectivity and performance to your customers.