Redditch Borough Council chooses BridgeHead With Quest Software

Redditch Borough Council has invested in a data archiving solution to optimise storage resources and support business continuity in the face of an increasing annual growth in stored data volumes.

 
The council, which employs approximately 1000 staff across its five main office locations, is implementing BH FileStore data archiving and management software from BridgeHead Software.
 
In addition to removing static, historical data from expensive primary storage, the council expects FileStore to help improve business continuity and resilience by streamlining daily full backup schedules which in some cases are taking up to twenty hours
 
A large element of the council’s paper documents and incoming correspondence is now scanned and stored electronically and many of its services are now delivered via the web, adding to the build up of data on its centralised file servers using direct attached disk storage.
 
“We’re planning on using archiving as one of the tools to effectively managing the rapid growth in data,” said Rob Seager, IT Services Manager, who heads up a team of 12 that is responsible for the delivery of IT services throughout the organisation.
 
FileStore incorporates a policy based archiving engine which can automatically identify and remove static data from expensive primary storage. The data is indexed, compressed and placed within the archive which resides on lower cost media. A stub or pointer replaces data removed from the primary store so that end users are automatically directed to the archive when accessing files that have been moved.
 
“Just the simple fact that data is de-duplicated before it enters the archive will bring efficiencies,” said Rob Seager who explained that there is a tendency for several copies of files to be maintained in different places.
 
Reducing the volume of data held on primary storage will help cut the council’s daily backup windows and make data recovery faster to support business continuity. The total time and resources devoted to backup can be reduced because FileStore does not require archived data to be frequently backed up. The software is able to simultaneously hold multiple copies of the archive in multiple locations.  
 
“Older data may end up being archived onto off-line optical media or even DVDs,” said Rob Seager who explained that the implementation of FileStore will tie in with Redditch’s information management goals. These relate to creating efficiencies in the way information is stored and shared across the organisation and are part of a larger Transformational Government strategy covering IT and the wider organisation.
 
BridgeHead was initially chosen by Redditch Borough Council because of its ability to work in tandem with Quest Software’s email archiving product, Quest Archive Manager, which has been installed to support the council’s email archiving strategy.