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Making ALL the right Connexions

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 6, Issue 9 - December 2006

With constantly expanding volumes of data, Connexions - a government support service in England specifically catering for the needs of young people - discovered its backups were becoming increasingly difficult to manage. A solution was needed - and quickly

Connexions is a government support service in England, tailored to the needs of young people. Through 47 local partnerships and an interactive web site, it offers integrated information, advice, guidance and support to 13-19 year olds (and young people with disabilities up to age 25) throughout England. The service provides young people with access to a personal adviser (PA) to help them navigate their way through life's decisions and realise their potential as they move on into adulthood.

To support its daily operations, Connexions managed a Microsoft Windows network, utilising 14 separate servers, including an Exchange server and SQL server. The company secured its data using NT Backup software on DDS4 drives, locally mounted on each server. Every day, full backups were run, requiring manual intervention to start each backup process. Connexions assigned a dedicated IT manager to administer its backup operations.

With growing volumes of data, Connexions discovered its backups were becoming increasingly difficult to manage. The amount of information on half of its servers exceeded one tape cartridge, causing backup operations to stall until a second tape was inserted. This manual intervention did not take place typically until the next business day, delaying the backup process.

Connexions looked to streamline and automate its data backup, in order to minimise the load on its IT staff and improve process efficiencies. As a result, the company turned to storage specialist NCE Europe to develop a solution that would address their specific business requirements. There were a number of challenges that had to be overcome, arising from:

• Increasing volumes of data, resulting in a longer backup window
• Tape technology that did not scale to the growing backup requirements
• An administrative burden of excessive manual processes
• Ineffective processes, due to delayed backups

On account of Connexions' limited IT staff, NCE wanted to implement a solution that would be easy to operate and manage. From its portfolio of products, it chose Breece Hill's iStoRA appliance. Unlike other products, the iStoRA provided a fully integrated disc-to-disc-to-tape (D2D2T) platform, with all components tested and qualified to work together.
Using best-in-class components - Veritas backup software, Intel server, Hitachi discs and HP tapes - iStoRA would eliminate many of Connexions' existing IT headaches and fully protect their business-critical information.

Connexions installed Breece Hill's iStoRA appliance and saw immediate benefits. The system, utilising Symantec¦Veritas Backup Exec, eliminated the need for full daily backups. Instead, the software performed one full backup each week.

OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE
On Monday, the system backed up 400GB of data. Tuesday through Friday, it performed incremental backups, backing up only the files
that had changed since the previous incremental process. With fewer files needed to be run - 200GB typically - backup time was greatly reduced.
Connexions also achieved optimal performance by means of Breece Hill's D2D2T architecture. For daily backups, the system backed up data to its eight SATA discs.

With increased disc performance, backups went from six hours per server to complete, to just eight 8 hours in total, saving the company 75 hours of backup time. Connexions now transfers data from disc to tape over the weekend for off-line storage. Finally, Connexions has been able to reduce its media requirements with the iStoRA appliance.

Business payback
With the previous tape technology, Connexions needed 20 tapes a week to meet its backup needs. With iStoRA, it can now protect the same amount of data using four tapes - two daily and two weekly. As a result, the organisation has made important savings, in terms of media costs and administrative time.
Using Breece Hill's iStoRA, Connexions is able to meet its growing data protection challenges and streamline its backup processes. And there have also been a number of other gains for the business, with the solution:

• Providing easy, intuitive administration
• Freeing up IT staff for strategic programmes
• Shortening backup windows by a factor of five
• Reducing by 200% the amount of data and tapes being processed, through incremental backups
• Cutting backup time from 84 hours
to just eight hours
• Increasing data protection with up
to 2TB of storage space, ensuring future data growth, with additional scalability

In a nutshell, the iStoRA solution has now ensured all the right Connexions.