F5 Networks (News - Alert), a provider of Application Delivery Networking, or “AND,” solutions, announced that the SEGA Corp. selected the F5 ARX solution to simplify their file management and archiving systems.

SEGA chose the file management solutions to cope up with the growing demands for a simpler and reliable data management solution driven by the increase in high-quality videos and multimedia contents.

The huge data created a heavy load on company’s file servers used by nearly 4,000 employees. As a result, weekly backup operations took 40 hours to complete. It is when SEGA started looking for options to simplify the operation of its file servers and make data management efforts more efficient.

ARX file virtualization solution helped SEGA to implement an automated storage tiering strategy, which allowed the company to flexibly allocate storage resources, archiving non-critical data on lower-cost, large capacity devices and freeing up primary storage systems for its frequently used data, company officials said.

With ARX, the company could not only decrease the number of expensive primary storage systems required but also reduce the time required for backup operations, SEGA officials claimed. As a result, the company was also able to pool available storage resources from servers that had previously operated independently.

Since ARX uses lower-cost SATA disks for file archiving efforts, overall storage costs are reduced by two-thirds. As a result, the number of files subject to daily backup operations is reduced, thereby reducing the time spent on backup efforts by 40 percent, company officials claimed.

ARX enables data management on different operating systems such as Linux, Macintosh, and Windows Vista on a single client environment by enabling seamless data migration to new servers. With its “global namespace” capability, employees can continue accessing data in the manner they are used to, even when new servers are installed.

Clients can scale their storage architecture conveniently. With ARX, heterogeneous storage systems are virtualized for maximum efficiency. With a virtual storage environment, additional capacity can be added to the existing pool of resources to support the company’s growth initiatives.

Last month, F5 Networks released its F5 BIG-IP 10.1, the latest in its family of application delivery controllers for service providers, to meet the growing demand for mobile services.

BIG-IP version 10.1 allows service providers and system integrators to benefit from layer 7 traffic management for their authentication, authorization, and accounting infrastructure, without replacing existing AAA servers, according to company officials.