Standard School District in Bakerfield, CA Chooses Revinetix

IT professionals at school districts face increasing challenges of managing aging network infrastructures and protecting their districts' growing volumes of data. Limited budgets and resources are forcing IT managers to scrutinize their data protection systems and costs. Standard School District in Bakersfield, Calif., had outgrown its backup system and needed to find a replacement.

Backing up data on six Linux and Windows servers with files and user profiles from 3,400 staff and students using the District's 800-plus desktop computers at Standard School District was putting severe capacity constraints on the District's existing tape system. The amount of data requiring backup was outpacing the system's current capacity. As a stopgap Standard School District added a SAN, but the capacity was exhausted faster than anticipated.

Standard School District found itself in the position of having to pick and choose what to back up. It couldn't afford licenses to back everything up, and the cost of expanding capacity for the existing tape system was prohibitive.

"Any time you want to change what you're backing up - meaning how many tapes you want - you get double dinged," said Jefferson Davis, technology and information systems manager at Standard School District. "You're paying a per slot charge to the hardware vendor and then you're paying again to the software vendor. It makes blood shoot out of my eyes."

An additional hurdle was that the performance of the existing tape system was slow, which further constrained the efficiency of the District's limited IT staff of three.

Seeking an Alternative to Tape:
"With all of these cost and capacity constraints I had always thought, 'why are we doing this on tape?'" said Davis. "I had been watching developments in open source solutions where hot swap drives are widely used and thought they made a lot of sense."

Davis considered rolling his own data backup system, using open source software. Knowing this alternative would require a hefty amount of internal resources, he and his team decided to first evaluate other backup options. They were hoping to find an out of the box, affordable, scalable solution that would meet their backup needs.

The specific criteria the system would need to meet:

• Fast backup
• Intuitive interface to simplify scheduling jobs
• Flexible licensing to help manage costs
• Flexible and Affordable

While evaluating available backup systems, Davis participated on a 'backup best practices' webinar that included a demonstration of the RevOS backup software integrated into Revinetix appliances.   

"It was on this webinar that it clicked for me that the team could run this," said Davis. "It met all of our criteria. I didn't need to worry about how many agents can be deployed and, from a licensing standpoint, it was very flexible. If our systems changed, or we changed a server, I didn't have to go back for money."

"With Revinetix disk backup appliances there are no tapes, there is only a single archive drive," said Davis. "This appliance not only compared to other backup systems, but also offered us the ability to get up to speed really quickly.  In fact, we got up to speed faster than with any other products I've used in the past eight to 10 years. It was even easier to use than what was depicted in the webinar."

Fast, Reliable Data Restoration
When it comes to data restores the disk system has proven to be faster than tape.

"Going from tapes to disk is where disk really shines in speed of restore. There is no comparison," said Davis. "With tape, even if you are restoring a 2k file you can be waiting 10 minutes while the system finds a tape, spools to where the file is, and does its read and restore. Comparatively with disk, the first time I did a restore I didn't think it was working because it happened so quickly. The file was restored before I could navigate over to the active jobs. That was so cool."

The RevOS de-duplication technology that powers each backup system ensures that only a single copy of a file is stored.

Because of the de-duplication technology, the District has been able to extend its file retention, and can keep backup sets much longer than before because the tapes kept filling up.

Switching from tape to disk is delivering both time and cost savings for Standard School District. The capacity license eliminated per seat/site license fees, freeing up needed budget. Additionally, the disk system's functionality is saving IT staff from spending their time backing up data, allowing them to work on other mission critical tasks.

"If you're looking for a backup system that is simple, reliable, easy to deploy, your basic set it and forget it-type system, disk needs to be on your list," said Davis.