AutoSports Prestige Implements dataStor Shield From T Data

Backing up remote sites and branch offices is a challenge in many multi-site businesses, often there is no IT presence at many locations and traditional backup solutions using removable media can lead to problems with manageability of backup jobs, often resulting in missed backups, and limited ability to test restores. The advent of online backup solutions have offered a potential solution here, but in sites with slower connections, backing up servers with 10’s or 100’s of GB of data can be a real problem – de-duplicating that data at the source makes it possible to backup larger datasets, even over slow WAN links.

Autosports Prestige Pty Ltd is Car Dealership Group with eight Peugeot and Audi Showrooms in Sydney, Australia, and over 150 employees; PC-Net Services Pty Limited, an IT services and systems integrator looks after their entire IT infrastructure, from hardware procurement and system rollouts through to day to day IT support.

 
Prior to implementing dataStor shield EPS from T Data Pty Ltd, Autosports Prestige backups were decentralised; each dealership was responsible for running their own backup jobs, some backed up to tape, others to USB HDDs, and a variety of backup software applications were used.  
 
"The dealerships have no dedicated IT staff onsite, so the task of running backup jobs, and changing tapes or USB hard drives was generally a secondary responsibility of a nominated employee. It was not uncommon for backups to be missed, and test restores were a rarity, leaving some of the dealerships completely unprotected," said David Seward, Technical Director at PC-Net services.
 
PC-Net were looking for a cost effective solution that would allow them to centralise backup jobs to the groups head office over slow WAN links, to eliminate media management responsibilities at remote dealership sites, and allow easier monitoring and management including the ability to regularly test restores. In addition to this, it also needed to be easy to deploy and update, and have the ability to work with their existing infrastructure.

"We first became aware of dedupe some time ago, and always thought it could be a way to solve the backups problems AutoSports Prestige were experiencing, but before TData introduced us to dataStor, we had not managed to find a package that would provide the functionality required, at a price acceptable to our client," explained David. "The fact it could work largely with their existing infrastructure was a major benefit."
 
After a 30 day evaluation, PC-Net Services deployed dataStor Shield Enterprise Protection Server (EPS). The Enterprise Protection Server Management Console was installed on the existing server at head office and a NAS was configured to host the destination Store. Separate stores were created for files, Exchange & SQL data, then the details of each sever to be backed up was entered into the console.

"The deployment of dataStor Shield couldn’t have been any easier, because no agents need to be installed on protected servers, all you need to do is install the EPS Manager, create a store, enter the severs to be protected, seed the initial backups for larger datasets, and you’re done," said David. "It will also make the ongoing management of upgrades, and adding additional servers to backup plans as the business grows or hardware is updated much easier."
 
Ross Reichardt, Technical Support Specialist at TData explained:" When a backup job runs, dataStor shield pushes out a scheduled task and binary file to each sever on the protection plan. Using VSS, an initial image of the server is taken, the image is then globally deduplicated on the protected machine, and only the unique deduplicated data is sent across the network and stored on the NAS in the AutoSports Prestige head office. Once the backups have been centralised on the NAS, the stores are copied onto an RDX Device attached directly to the NAS, and taken offsite."
 
"We now have the AutoSports Prestige head office, and two of their remote sites protected with dataStor shield, and it is working flawlessly", said David Seward, PC-Net Services. "Over the next 6 months we will roll this out to the remaining 6 dealerships in the group. The stand out feature of dataStor is without doubt the deduplication engine; the dedupe ratios we have seen have been truly impressive. For example we have been able to back up a remote file server with over 16GB of data over an ADSL2+ connection with just 600k Upload speeds as only 8MB on average is coming in over the WAN."
 
"By implementing dataStor we have been able to eliminate media management tasks at the dealerships, and now have regular and reliable backups from the protected sites. We can monitor these from one console, and receive daily reports on backup jobs so we can be sure that they are working correctly," said David.