Kaiser Federal Bank Secures DR and eDiscovery Investment

Kaiser Federal Bank sought an integrated solution that met their backup, recovery, high availability and email archiving needs. Following a careful evaluation and analysis, Kaiser Federal Bank selected Sonasoft, Inc. and deployed SonaSafe for Exchange and SonaSafe for Email Archiving, disaster recovery and data protection.

Kaiser Federal Bank is a 5-Star Superior Rated bank from Bauer Financial. Their institution has nine locations throughout California and was originally organized in 1953 as a credit union, known as Kaiser Permanente Federal Credit Union (KPFCU). In 1999, the organization applied for a new charter as a mutual savings association. The bank is a community-oriented financial institution offering a variety of financial services to individual and business customers.

Kaiser Federal Bank uses emails extensively. Email is used for sending financial information, documents and agreements both within and outside the organization. Kaiser Federal Bank not only used Microsoft Exchange Server for communicating with their clients and peers, but also as a document management and storing system. As a result, the Exchange server is a critical element for conducting business operations across the entire organization. It was imperative that the IT department maintain 24/7 availability of Exchange server to ensure business transactions were successfully completed. Kaiser Federal Bank’s users require the ability to search and retrieve information regarding communications with clients, in addition to specific information about financial documents. In essence, the users were looking for a comprehensive and integrated eDiscovery and archiving tool that is flexible and intuitive.

The IT department was forced to respond to these challenges, as existing solutions could not effectively meet the complex demands of the organization. With current solutions in the marketplace, the IT department had to implement multiple solutions from different vendors to meet the backup, replication and archiving needs of the firm. This led to product evaluations of solutions that could enable Kaiser Federal Bank to set up off-site servers, which are readily available in the case of a critical outage. Also, the solution had to satisfy the archiving and eDiscovery needs of the organization.

Solution
Kaiser Federal Bank demanded a solution that provided total protection to the Exchange server while meeting the archiving /eDiscovery compliance requirements. Kaiser Federal Bank found Sonasoft delivered a single, integrated solution that provided the required capability at a cost-effective price. Kaiser Federal Bank researched and evaluated different options on the market from many different vendors. After participating in the Sonasoft product demo, engaging with the technical support team and reviewing the associated documentation, Kaiser Federal Bank was sure the SonaSafe product was the right solution that addressed their specific needs.

First, Kaiser Federal Bank implemented the SonaSafe Exchange Disaster Recovery (DR)/Replication solution to meet high availability, data protection and disaster recovery needs. The primary Exchange server is located in Covina, while the back-up Exchange server is located at a regional Data Center. Mailboxes are backed up locally and replicated remotely to the DR site in Riverside.

"My expectations for an Exchange back up/failover/DR solution were pretty high given the extensive search and testing of other products prior to finding the Sonasoft solution. After our evaluation of the SonaSafe product, it was clear that we found right solution," said Paul Madore, Network Administrator, Kaiser Federal Bank. "SonaSafe for Exchange is truly amazing, we can recover the Exchange Server, emails, and test the failover without interrupting our daily operation."

Disaster Recovery
Kaiser Federal Bank initially deployed the backup and replication for Exchange Server. The bank wanted to ensure a solution was in place that would provide the ability to maintain business should the exchange server fail. For Kaiser Federal Bank, the obvious choice was the Sonasoft solution. The Sonasoft solution provided the ability to automatically and seamlessly failover a single user or all users should a failure occur.

Archiving, eDiscovery, and Storage Management
After two years of successful operation of the disaster recovery and data protection solution, Kaiser Federal Bank proceeded to deploy an archiving solution for Exchange server. Kaiser Federal Bank wanted to ensure the archiving solution could seamlessly coexist with the disaster recovery solution. The Sonasoft solution provides a fully automated and integrated solution which offers distinct advantages over non-integrated, standalone offerings including reliability, performance, functionality and affordability.

"I chose the SonaSafe archive product after having a great experience with Sonasoft’s Exchange backup/failover/DR product. I had high expectations of the archiving product," commented Paul Madore. "I can comfortably say that my expectations were met with SonaSafe for Email Archiving. The product is straight-forward to install and configure. Administration is intuitive while the program does not place undue strain on the Exchange Server. Our next phase is to implement Continuous Archiving, so when we failover, we ensure archiving continues on the standby server."

Excellent ROI
Kaiser Federal Bank has derived excellent ROI, both in terms of manpower and equipment. Kaiser Federal Bank is able to perform regular backups while having the ability to synchronize remote standby servers with their primary servers in near real-time. This was achieved at a fraction of the cost when compared to competing solutions.

Professional and Timely Support
The implementation of SonaSafe can be achieved with ease and without complexity. The recommendations and best practices framework provided by the Sonasoft support team enabled Kaiser Federal Bank to get the optimal performance from their system. "The support staff at Sonasoft was very knowledgeable about their product and was familiar with the networking environment where the product was being deployed," said Paul Madore. "Sonasoft demonstrated their ability to address all issues that arose using all available resources. The comprehensive product coupled with the added support is incredible and hard to beat."