Kent Police Opts for Acronis Backup & Recovery for Archiving System

Acronis International GmbH,
has been selected by Kent Police
to supply a DR and data protection system to protect more than 500TB of data
created, stored and used by its 6,000 employees.

Kent Police had previously
relied on multiple backup and recovery platforms to protect data across a
heterogeneous mix of more than 500 physical and virtual Windows, Linux and
VMware servers.

Andy Barker, IT director at
Kent Police, said: "Regular bomb threats,
protests, cyber attacks and viruses are just some of the reasons why we needed
a more robust but easier to manage backup and recovery plan. With ready access
to data a critical requirement throughout the Force, we also had to drastically
cut previously slow recovery times."

After evaluation, they found
that only Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Advanced
Server could address its
heterogeneous, physical and virtual server needs within a single platform. It
is a solution for data and application databases backup, it reduces the
management burden of procuring, learning and integrating additional products as
networks evolve, thereby reducing time with one solution that can be managed across
physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Kent Police purchased 140
physical server licences as well as 25 virtual edition licences to back up the
VM hosts and the VMs on them. It has also opted to use data de-dupe technology
embedded within the product to shrink backups by up to 80%. It save space
needed for backups and initial testing indicates that recovering data, a task
that used to take up to three days with the previous solution, can now be
accomplished within the hour. Kent Police estimates that de-dupe alone will
save at least £13,000 annually in storage costs.

Granularity of recovery was
another priority for Barker’s team. The catalogue and search capabilities in
Acronis product give Kent Police granular restore access, so a corrupted,
deleted or lost file can be recovered individually. The IT team can drill down
to file level, pick out the necessary file and recover it, usually in a matter
of minutes. With its migration capabilities, the team also plans to use ABR
whenever a system needs to be upgraded. By taking a full image of the system
prior to any upgrade so that, if the upgrade goes wrong for any reason, the IT
department can rollback the server to its original healthy state. 

Barker says that, following the
deployment at Kent Police; he also expects to roll it out at the Essex Police
force.

He explains: "This is part of
a wider strategy to form a combined IT department, pool resources for greater
efficiency and cut IT costs for both police forces even further."

Alan Laing, VP EMEA, Acronis,
concludes: "Like more organisations
today, Kent Police, is faced with growing volumes of data but tightening
budgets which is introducing new challenges. As a result, it needed an
uncomplicated and flexible solution for its data protection and storage
optimisation. Acronis Backup & Recovery is a single solution that works
across every environment, giving the team at Kent the confidence that whatever
network development they may face easy access and availability of their
protected data, no matter where it resides, is achievable."