Backup as a service
The customer is a technological company and solution provider with headquarters in the USA and is represented on several continents. Part of its worldwide operation is implemented by specialists from the Czech Republic.
The customer required a system for data backup and recovery with high quality parameters. They had to decide whether it made sense to build a solution within the company and run it along its line, or whether a better option would be to find a way for it to be available in the form of a service.
The objective and what influenced their choice
The customer’s needs were clearly defined: securely backing up data to another location, with a robust tool for a wide range of needs outlined by the company. Given its importance and sensitivity, the IT specialists wanted data security in their own hands and under their control. When US management first found out that “as-a-service” was the proposed option – and that the data from all their branches all over the world would be backed up in a data centre somewhere in "Eastern Europe", we did not look likely to succeed. However, the security protection and processes of this backed up data were supported by careful argumentation. Therefore, even this company did not see any obstacles. The economy of the operation and the quality of services were deciding factors in choosing the data backup “as-a-service” option. The primary storage is at the customer’s site, while the media server with the backed up data is at the customer’s location in Prague. The backups are copied to the DataSpring Lužice data centre.
How the service was deployed
The customer had an accurate idea of the final design of the service, i.e., the range of backed up servers, such as MS Windows, RedHat Linux, Debian Linux, AIX, HP UX, database backup of RDBMS - MS SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL / MariaDB and VMWare virtual servers, backup of vSphere Center, for which the RPO parameter required 96 hours and the RTO 73 hours. The RPO expresses to what level (point) in the past the data should be restored. In other words, the amount of data you can afford to lose. The RTO expresses the amount of time required to recover data and the entire operation of an unavailable system. Several workshops were held with the customer, where we clarified the information needed to set up the backup platform (e.g. firewall settings, required bandwidth for connectivity, and backup policies such as retention) and integration into the customer's environment. The implementation itself took less than 3 weeks. The final step was customer acceptance in the form of an audit of the acceptance criteria – and this took place without reservations.
Customer experience, service benefits
The deployment did not cause any problems, everything worked routinely to the customer’s satisfaction. Even long-term use was evaluated as trouble-free. After some time, the service became more expensive due to higher prices for software licences on the manufacturer’s side. Despite this, the customer continued to use backup as-a-service; it remained sufficiently economical and reliable for them. The given technology for data backup and recovery is suitable for larger customers with high demands, it is user-friendly and reliably and efficiently backs up at a reasonable price. Those who have personal experience with this technology say that you will not find a better backup tool in the world.
The DataSpring service the customer uses
A comprehensive cloud solution such as Platform as Services type - Backup Commvault, which enables you to back up entire images of virtual servers, individual files from virtual or physical servers, as well as data directly from applications such as MS SQL, Exchange, Sharepoint, Active Directory, Oracle, SAP, DB2, PostgreSQL , MySQL, etc.