Petco Case Study

Business Database Applications

Individual Assignment 1

Better Storage for Our Best Friends case (Petco case study)

International Technological University

Abhishek Sawant
 Petco Case Study

Introduction

Petco Animal Supplies, Inc. established in 1965, is a leading retailer of pet supplies

across the US, from cat collars to aquariums to pet food. The company also provides services and

advice that its consumers need to care for their pets. Their services include dog training,

grooming, vaccinations, pet photography and pet insurance. Petco operates in more than 1200

stores nationwide and has a strong presence online at petco.com. Beyond its retail operations, the

company has raised over $110 million towards its independent nonprofit organization – The

Petco Foundation. The foundation’s primary purpose is to improve the welfare of animals and

support thousands of local animal welfare groups around the US.

Over the past six years, the company has taken several actions to build an organizational

structure that meets its requirement of skills and experience to manage its ongoing redesign

effort. Petco’s senior executives and business partners have provided a strategic direction and

support throughout the company. In addition, the company has identified both internal and

external business partnerships that have been required to support their continuous effort in

network transformation

Data backup problems when Petco used tapes

Magnetic tapes were seen as the most cost-effective way to store data, as the cost of

storage was merely 1.1 cents per GB. Magnetic tapes require aregularbackup of data from its

original storage medium and to be processed manually or automated through a software.

Organizations storeda large amount of data to avoid hard drive crashes or an incident that would

make the original data irretrievable. Although magnetic tapes provided the lowest cost, they had

major flaws. The process of copying data from a tape to the disk is time consuming and when

Abhishek Sawant
 Petco Case Study

Terabytes of data is being transferred, organizations are at risk as the data becomes unreliable

after five years. To maintain the consistency of data, a magnetic tape must be reeled back and

forth frequently to maintain an even tension as uneven tension may render the data and make it

unreadable.

In case of Petco, it heavily relied on magnetic tapes for data backup, as it had to maintain

thousands of products in the warehouse and fulfill orders placedthrough their website. Petco

maintained a very high standard about its deliveryof products to its consumers, any downtime or

disruption could cause a significant loss of revenue.The company recorded and backed up data

every few hours using magnetic tapes, but the approach had limitations. Magnetic tape backup

was reliable but posed a risk, as there were delays before a transfer of data begins following an

instruction for its transfer. Further, several hours of data could not be recorded on the tape in

case of a power outage and would lead to loss of data. Recording data on magnetic tapes was

labor-intensive and time-consumingbecause they had to be mounted and dismounted manually

and had to be rewinded,thereforedelays the availability of new tapes for recording data.

Data backup problems when Petco used mirroring

Disk mirroringis the replication of data to two or more disks and the entire disk is

automatically copied to a backup disk. Petco’s IT staff implemented this technique to overcome

the issues related to magnetic tapes.It was a good choiceby the IT staff because both disks were

operational and data can be read from them simultaneously, which makes read operations quite

fast. This technique resolved Petco’s issue of labor and the data was made available immediately

from the mirror disk. While this technique resolved the issues faced with magnetic tape backup,it

also presented problems.

Abhishek Sawant
 Petco Case Study

Petco maintains thousands of products across its three main warehouses, and due to the

volume of orders,each item’s location is tracked in real time. Employees scan product barcodes,

record inventory receipts and track shipping instructions and execution, this data is vital for the

company’s day to day warehouse operations and loss of data would have adverse effects on their

inventory. The disk mirroring techniquepossessedfurther risks to the company’s database. For

instance – if the database gets corrupted in case of an improper shutdown, because the data is

copied in both disks, both databases are corrupted. Similarly, if the original data is infected with

a virus, the mirror disk is infected too.

Data mirroring may seem to be a simple, budget-friendly data storage option but its

fraught with problems. As Computer Forensics’ MD Brian Eardley-Wilmot thinks mirroring is

“bad choice for a back-up strategy” for an even simpler reason.

Disadvantages of using DAS and how are these disadvantages compounded when a

company grows.

The direct-attached storage (DAS) network is a computer storage that is directly attached

to one computer or a server. The DAS network has limited scalability, because each additional

server and it storage devices must be managed separately and cannot be managed over a

network. It also limits the number of drivers that can be installed on the storage network.In

addition, if the server is down other computers cannot access the storage devices. The main

downside of the direct-attached network is its ability to accommodate more hardware or software

for changing business needs.

The other downside of direct-attached storage (DAS) where each computer is backed up

to its own magnetic disk is that thedisks are not utilized to its full storage capacity – up to 50% of

Abhishek Sawant
 Petco Case Study

the disk space is never used. Futher, as the company grows the total underutilized disk space

grows as well which would further increase the cost of storage for the company.

Benefits Petco acquired when adopting the current technology for backing up warehouse

data.

Petco’s IT staff faced various challenges for storing data of their warehouse operations.

The IT staff evaluated and examined various data storage and backup solutions. They looked at

SAN (storage area network), it provided them to store and transfer data between servers and

storage devices but was relatively expensive and complex to manage. Further they examined

NAS, it gave them the option for scalability (in case they had to open more warehouses in the

future), but would have required much equipment to handle data communications. After

evaluating both storage options, the Petco IT staff opted for a system provided by Network

Appliances, Inc. called iSCSI. The system provided very fast and reliable data transfers by

utilizing the existing internet standards. The adoption of the NetApp system benefited Petco, as it

enhanced the performance, availability, and manageability of the warehouse data system that

coordinated efforts for its three distribution centers. In addition, the NetApp system also

eliminated money spent on buying excess capacity for storing data. The other benefit of using

this technology was the transition, the system was deployed within 2 days without affecting the

current warehouse operations. As said by Hanuman Yalamanchi, PETCO’s Database

Administrator “It works very well in our distribution center,”. Further, AndrewRoss, PETCOs IS

product manager adds that the solution is highly scalable and “offers the flexibility to adapt

quickly and easily to management needs.”

Abhishek Sawant
 Petco Case Study

References

Supply Chain World, Staff Writer (2013, September 24). Petco.

Retrieved from http://www.scw-mag.com/

Developer (2014, December 14). Don’t use disk mirroring as back up.

Retrieved from http://www.datarecovery.co.nz/

Gary N. Bowen, Business Writer (2006, December 1). SaaS Provider Helps Make PETCO’s

Supply Chain the Cat’s Whiskers | Article. Retrieved from http://www.outsourcing-center.com/

Sousa, Kenneth. J. (2009) Management Information Systems (Seventh Edition). Stamford, CT:

Cengage

Abhishek Sawant