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.