There are two ways to approach data protection. The first is to rely on a cumbersome and complex tape drive regime, with administrative overheads multiplied by the number of sites you have. The other is to deploy Attix5 and enjoy automated, secure and centralised backups with full management reporting and simple restore procedures.
That's according to the Services Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) CIO Yvette Grieb, who selected the Attix5 Backup Professional Server Edition after extensive market research and evaluation of a comprehensive range of leading solutions.
SETAs were established in the year 2000 in terms of the Skills Development Act and are responsible for the disbursement of training levies payable by all employers. The purpose of the SETAs, each of which is focused on a different vertical industry, is to ensure the skill requirements of the respective sector are identified and adequate and appropriate skills are readily available. The Services SETA, which has over 135 000 member companies, is tasked with ensuring that the skills needs of this diverse sector are identified and addressed.
Like many organisations, the Services SETA is an information-driven company and places a high premium on having its data protected. "The information contained in our e-mail system is particularly important and goes back to 2001. In some cases, this data is necessary for corporate governance and legal issues; if we can't find and produce that data when necessary, it can have serious consequences," says Grieb.
She explains that the organisation has to back up data from several sites located across the country. "Our previous approach required a lot of administrative input. At each site, it was necessary to maintain tape drives, while each day a person would have to physically conduct the backup. In addition to that, tape media would have to be available and it would have to be sent offsite."
She adds that financial databases are an additional essential component of the organisation's information store; "We're sitting on around 300GB of data and growing."
With the tape regime, which predated Attix5, saying backups were a hassle is an understatement, Grieb confirms. "We had sleepless nights. We were tearing our hair out. Relying on people to change tapes is just not enough to ensure essential information is protected. No one wants to be responsible for that; it made for a huge headache and that headache just got bigger if a restore was necessary," she says.
This was compounded by the cryptic nature of the previous backup management software. "Simply put, this just didn't work half the time," Grieb says.
Given the trying times experienced with tape and complex software, Grieb says Attix5 was something of a godsend. "As a local company, it was a huge plus that we could speak to local staff and have onsite support with any issues. From the start, the difference was apparent: the previous solution took forever to install, while the complete Attix5 deployment was over within a week. The backup is stable and reliable and fully automated; the user interface is simple and easy to use. You don't have to be a boffin to run a backup," she says.
Attix5 differs from tape backups in that it is a centralised, offsite solution that sends backups over Internet lines, which are stored in a remote data centre. Michael Law, Attix5 managing director, believes the market is now very receptive to the concept of disc-based backup. "It is far simpler, faster, more reliable and has additional security features often not utilised by tape." The Attix5 Backup Professional solution not only shortens backup windows by reducing the amount of data sent over the LAN/WAN or Internet, but also utilises minimal disc storage which, in return, assists in looking after the environment as less storage means less power usage.
With the initial backup in place, a small Attix5 client program is installed on each device, which is to be backed up. This scans for any file changes and using advanced compression technology, sends only the changes over the Internet lines. Grieb confirms that the bandwidth usage is minimal. "There is little or no impact on connectivity even when backups are being transmitted," she says.
Given the challenges the organisation had formerly experienced with status reports on backups, Grieb adds that the powerful yet simple reporting capability of the solution is valued. "I get all I need to know about backup status directly to my e-mail. At a glance, I know if there have been any issues, where these are and what to do about it."
With 11 servers and a mirror currently protected by Attix5 Backup Professional, the success of the solution has the Services SETA contemplating extension of the solution to protect data on its notebooks and PCs too. "Things have changed since we started using Attix5. We are spending less money and man-hours trying to sort out backups and funny error messages from the previous backup management software. We no longer have to deal with tape drives failing and sleepless nights. Now we're sleeping much better," Grieb concludes.
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