2014 StorageCraft. All rights reserved. UK CASE STUDY: Greencorn IT

Transcription

1 1 UK CASE STUDY: Greencorn IT

2 Interview with Greencorn's Managing Director, Andrew Loftus StorageCraft spoke to Andrew Loftus, Managing Director of Greencorn, on how Greencorn work with StorageCraft products to provide effective backup and disaster recovery solutions for their clients. What type of clients do Greencorn? Why was it important that they had a reliable BDR solution? Greencorn have many clients in different sectors but mainly in financial and legal professional services, education and charity sectors. Greencorn are responsible for our clients backups; we are not just delivering a product, we are providing a service. If there is a problem, it is our responsibility, so it was absolutely crucial to us to have a robust system we could rely on 200 percent. Greencorn uses StorageCraft Technology to back up images of our client servers, both locally and to our data centres. A key part of the selection criteria was that, as well as being technically superior, it would work on both physical and virtual environments. The technology allows both a local and a cloud image backup to be held in an efficient way. Aswell as being technically superior, StorageCraft would work on both physical and virtual environments 2

3 Importantly for Greencorn, the system allowed full and detailed management and monitoring so we can be sure that the system is working every step of the way, from the source server to the destination virtual image in our data centre. If any problem occurs, we are notified instantly and can take the appropriate action. What features did you like about StorageCraft products from management and monitoring of backups? We also needed a system that could scale well for all the clients we had plus the ones we planned to work with in the future. We also needed a system that allowed our clients to restore individual files quickly and easily as well as provide a server image based solution that could provide full disaster recovery. Why did you or your clients need a solution that was scalable? The granular control and monitoring of the separate products allow us to be confident that it is working. ShadowProtect will report on the local backup The client side StorageCraft ImageManager will report on the consolidation and shipping to the data centre The data centre StorageCraft ImageManager will report on the files once they have been shipped and also regularly verify the image chain We can be sure that the image stored in the data centre is a working image that can be relied on. Greencorn had a bank of managed clients that mostly relied on tape technology to back up important data. We found that this technology was simply not reliable enough and that a large proportion of the issues we had to resolve were in the backup area. We needed a secure backup that would just work, back up to the cloud, and also allow us to manage the process so we (and our clients) could have confidence that the system was working and data was safe and secure. It was not our clients that needed a scalable solution, it was us. We wanted a product that would allow us to offer a managed backup/dr service to as many clients as we provide the service to it is essential that we are not restricted commercially by technical limitations. When have you had a client where they had to use a backup? In a recent issue we had a client with a server fault, identified by 10 a.m. in the morning. We were on-site with a loan server (a completely different make/model/specification), and within three hours had the loan server up and running with the exact same image of the old server. No user/client had to be re-configured. Users were able to continue working as though nothing had happened (they had a long lunch though!). We have also used StorageCraft technology to migrate servers from on premise to the cloud with no risk and in minutes regardless of the internet connection speeds. We needed a system that allowed our clients to restore individual files quickly and easily as well as provide a server image based solution that could provide full disaster recovery" 3

4 How did you find using StorageCraft for server migrations to the Cloud? With the HSR (HeadStart Restore ) feature of StorageCraft it is possible to transfer a huge server from on-premise to a data centre/remote location even if communication lines are bad. This is because the main backup can be taken over time (or transferred/ seeded with a physical disk), so the only transfer before the migration is changed data which (as ShadowProtect works at a block level) can be surprisingly small. We have moved servers of over 1TB in size over a standard ADSL line in less than 30 minutes by using StorageCraft technology. We have found the ability to take an instant backup snapshot on a physical server has allowed us to work on a server where previously the risks would have been just too great. 4

5 ABOUT GREENCORN IT Greencorn are based in South East England and manage the technology of small and medium organisations of between 10 and 100 users. We do everything required to make technology work so our clients can run efficient businesses that succeed with less risk. Our strap line is All Systems On. 6

6 ABOUT STORAGECRAFT At StorageCraft, the goal of complete disaster recovery drives everything we do. Our StorageCraft Recover- Ability solution is an end-to-end, best-in-class backup and disaster recovery solution that is both fast and reliable. STORAGECRAFT RECOVER-ABILITY It starts with a good backup. Our award-winning StorageCraft ShadowProtect takes complete, pristine images of your machines, including all your operating systems, applications, services, and settings. It then records changes at the sector level, so you always have an up-to-date copy of every machine in your IT environment, whether it s a critical server or an employee laptop, physical or virtual. We even work with specialized database servers, like SQL, SharePoint, or Exchange. You can get granular recovery in Exchange with ShadowProtect Granular Recovery for Exchange. You have complete control over the frequency of your backups and you can set rules for consolidation and retention to manage your precious storage space using StorageCraft ImageManager. Plus, with StorageCraft ShadowControl CMD you can monitor the machines in your backup environment from a single interface and get alerts when a machine is running out of space, when a backup doesn t happen, or when any of a variety of conditions you specify is met. We also give you tools to test your backups using StorageCraft VirtualBoot and StorageCraft Image- Ready technologies, which gives you confidence that your data is safe and that a disaster won t shut you down or hold you up. If a disaster occurs, you can launch your backups as virtual machines with VirtualBoot or mount them as drives for complete, granular access to your data. Or you can pre-stage the recovery of a backup image in a virtual machine with our patented StorageCraft HeadStart Restore technology, so if your main server blows up, you can be up and running in minutes. You can even virtualize your data in our cloud so even Mother Nature can t keep you down. CONTACT US StorageCraft Technology Tellenganna House, Blackrock Rd, Cork, Ireland. Phone: (UK) contactus@eu.storagecraft.com Then, you can rebuild your infrastructure and recover to all kinds of machines, physical or virtual, using our StorageCraft Hardware Independent Restore technology or ShadowProtect IT Edition. You can t be sure what kind of disaster will strike you next, but with the StorageCraft Recover-Ability solution, you can be sure it doesn t matter. You ll be just fine. Copyright 2014 StorageCraft Technology Corporation. All rights reserved. This publication is for informational purposes only. STORAGECRAFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, IN THIS PUBLICATION. StorageCraft, ShadowProtect, ShadowControl, intelligentftp, ShadowStream, ShadowCloud, and HeadStart Restore names and logos are registered trademarks and ImageReady, CMD, VirtualBoot, Hardware Independent Restore, Recover-Ability, ImageManager, and Cloud Services names and logos are trademarks of StorageCraft Technology Corporation. All other brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. 7