Case Study: Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) achieves 59% data deduplication savings and lower backup costs with STORServer

Dallas Area Rapid Transit - Customer Case Study

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), the regional transit agency serving more than 220,000 passengers daily, needed to refresh its aging backup appliance and software to take advantage of IBM Spectrum Protect’s new DB2-based database and deduplication features while maintaining platform stability for critical radio and CAD/AVL dispatch data. Because STORServer had implemented DART’s original 2010 solution and demonstrated seamless integration and support, DART selected STORServer for a turnkey upgrade.

STORServer deployed an EBA852 enterprise backup appliance with SSD-hosted Spectrum Protect database, 20TB Storwize disk for primary backups, Spectrum Protect Suite licensing, and repurposed the existing IBM TS3100 tape library for offsite disaster recovery—managed via the STORServer Console for simplified administration and scalability. The upgrade delivered a 59% deduplication savings (3:1), 38% less storage used despite 40% data growth, reduced data protection costs, more efficient data movement, automated daily reporting, and reduced daily administration to under 30 minutes.

Dallas Area Rapid Transit

David Bauchert

Senior Control Systems Programmer