A Self-Storage Company in Data Storage

Kaseya, provider of information technology (IT) automation software for IT solution providers and public and private sector IT organizations, announced that Hide-Away Storage has deployed a disk-based data protection solution from Kaseya, extending reliable and efficient backup strategies in the data center to systems out on the edge of the network. Hide-Away Storage, a leader in the Florida self-storage industry with ten facilities throughout the state, can remotely monitor, maintain, update, secure and now back up any server and workstation on its distributed network from a single, Web-based management console.

Hide-Away Storage

"The Kaseya IT management framework enables us to implement a proactive IT management strategy, melding our backup solution directly with our efforts to maintain the health and availability of our business systems," said Todd Williams, network administrator, Hide-Away Storage.

Hide-Away Storage provides state-of-the-art security features in its 10 facilities that protect customers’ personal property from environmental damage and theft. A major component of this service is an automated gateway that monitors and regulates traffic in and out of each facility. Running on a secure and highly-available database of customer pin numbers, the gateway solution needs to be fully protected or customers will lose their 24×7 storage unit access. At the same time, each facility requires seamless access to the company’s point-of-sale application that is centrally deployed in the data center and gives managers the ability to check unit availability, conduct sales transactions and extend contracts.

"Being able to restore systems quickly allows us to tout our truly 24×7 self-storage services," Williams said. "Whether it is Wednesday at 3pm, Thursday at 2am or Sunday afternoon, our customers are guaranteed to be able to access their storage units through a secure automatic entry system."

Hide-Away Storage uses Kaseya to ensure that the systems that support and provide access to the company’s gateway and point-of-sale application are always available. As part of the solution deployed by Hide Away, the Kaseya Backup and Disaster Recovery (BU/DR) module is integrated with scalable storage management and disaster recovery management software from Acronis. This combination gives Hide Away the ability to back up and restore any system on their network from anywhere with an Internet connection, integrating as part of a complete and transparent data protection strategy. For Hide-Away’s Todd Williams, the integrated solution enables him to completely restore a server or workstation in a short period of time–a process he’s even done from his Web-enabled cell phone. This ability to recover data and restore systems to a set point in time reduces downtime while improving employee productivity and customer service.

"Disaster recovery planning isn’t just a good idea, it’s a business imperative," said Stephen Lawton, senior director of strategic marketing at Acronis. "Hide-Away Storage understands this and selected a service provider in Kaseya that has the tools and expertise to ensure that its mission-critical data is protected and secure."

The Kaseya BU/DR module also backs up Hide-Away Storage’s corporate information in the data center including six servers housing Exchange, SQL and file data as well as personal network folders and executive laptops. Incremental backups are conducted each night in less than two hours with full backups done each weekend. The backup data is then migrated to an off-site disaster recovery facility, protecting the company from the loss of its data center or a regional disaster. The data can then be recovered at the push of a few buttons–often in less than five minutes–and restored on a new workstation or server in less than an hour.

"Data assurance is vital in the retail industry and many of these organizations have a small IT staff responsible for multiple locations. Visiting each location to perform imaging, backup and recovery tasks is not only ineffective, it’s often impossible," said Jim Alves, executive vice president of product marketing, Kaseya. "The Kaseya platform helps IT to implement a corporate data protection strategy that can be easily deployed and managed remotely from any location using a single unified Web-based console".