Attix5 Recovers Data of South African Municipal Office

A September 2011 fire in a South African municipality destroyed an entire computer room and also the backup tapes containing a copy of the organizational data.

Vital data would have been lost if it were not for the fact that the organization was in the proof of concept phase of an Attix5-powered backup and restore project deployment.

Stage2Data is the Master Distributor of Attix5 in North America and their CTO, Jacques Swanepoel suggests: "Even if an entire data centre goes up in flames, it is possible to be backup and running within mere hours when you are using a system which delivers a reliable, automated, remote copy."

The fire and the near loss of vital data is being used by Stage2Data as an example of the importance of planning for disaster and the power of backup and recovery solutions by Attix5.

According to Peter Balt, CEO of Munsoft, which provides software and services to the Local Municipality where the fire took place, "This municipality has foreseen the unexpected and taken appropriate precautions. Had it relied on outdated tape-based protection, it may have had an offsite copy as a best-case scenario. It is likely that such a copy would be outdated, if available at all, and it might take weeks or even months to get back into business."

Swanepoel uses this example to highlight the necessity of protecting data against the unexpected and the weakness of relying on tape. "There is no better way to protect yourself from data loss than using a system which delivers a reliable, automated, remote copy."

Stage2Data president Jeff Collier has seen this type of potential data loss before and says: "In every kind of company information system there is a wealth of information that is critical to the operation of the entity. Disasters can leave business vulnerable and often destroyed and they need to be appropriately planned for."

In the case of the fire, a remote, offsite copy of the municipality’s data was in existence. This data is kept up to date automatically thanks to the Attix5 technology.

Swanepoel explains how it works: "An initial backup is made and taken offsite for storage on a disk subsystem in a data centre. Attix5 Pro is installed on the client’s systems; it automatically scans for any changes to the data and synchronizes these changes over the Internet to maintain that offsite copy as an up-to-date version of the client’s business."