Red Robin entrusts Synology with critical transaction and surveillance data

Being a large-scale restaurant chain with millions of customers, Red Robin must have a reliable method for processing transactions and monitoring restaurant activity for security purposes. Their online ordering and transaction processing systems are hosted on virtual machines that require reliable and high-performance storage. Similarly, having access to surveillance footage is critical, so storage needs to be dependable. Failure in either of these tasks can result in millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Red Robin ended up deploying a 4-bay rackmount server from Synology at over 400 of their locations. Each server has two SSDs that act as a datastore for their virtual machine hosts, as well as a local software repository for their online ordering automation platform. The other two drive bays are filled with HDDs and used as a storage destination for surveillance footage. 

Additionally, Red Robin has a 4-bay rackmount server in their data center using Synology’s Central Management System to monitor and manage the operations of all remote servers, allowing them to make changes without being physically on-site with the server.

Having a compact, 4-bay server in each restaurant location is a simple and cost-effective way for Red Robin to manage their need for reliable transaction processing and surveillance storage. The process is easily replicated, and drives or entire units can be quickly replaced with minimal setup when needed. During a recent system update, Red Robin was able to replace older 4-bay servers with newer ones in all locations within a three week time frame.