A Switch from CommVault to Dell AppAssure Software Eliminates Enormous Backup Windows and Gives Superior Offsite Replication to Architectural & Design Firm

Environmental Snapshot:

• Exchange 2010 mailboxes: 240 mailboxes, with 160 users
• SQL servers: 1 SQL 2005 running Deltek for accounting and marketing, among others
• Windows file servers: 1 primary, and a distributed file server with HP SAN with 4 shelves and DAS
• Virtualization: primarily VMware on ESXi, with recently incorporated 2 Hyper-V servers for Exchange and Exchange UM
• Data total: 2 TB

(Dell AppAssure’s innovative software permits VMware backup, Windows Server backup, Microsoft Exchange backup, Microsoft SQL Server backup which goes beyond protecting your data by protecting your entire application.)

Business Challenges

For over 20 years, BCRA has been one of the Northwest’s premier design firms, providing architecture & interior design, science & engineering, planning & resource management, and visual communication & strategy. With a unique client-focused model, BCRA brings together nine different design areas to address each project from an assortment of disciplines, ensuring that challenges are viewed from every angle. This exceptional approach allows BCRA’s nearly 160 employees to collaborate at a high level. However, this is true only if the data they need is available and the IT systems that support the data are functioning at the high level that the rest of the company does.

BCRA’s IT Director, Phil Lewis, and BCRA’s Network Administrator, Jon Hicken knew that too often this wasn’t the case. “We tried several things over the years because we needed to make sure that we had good backups and good restore capabilities should anything happen to our data,” says Lewis. “Years ago, we used Backup Exec, but in 2007, when Symantec bought Veritas, they pushed out a buggy version upgrade causing us to lose confidence in it, so we got rid of it. When Jon showed up as our new Network Administrator, we switched to CommVault’s Simpana.”

The process of making sure BCRA’s data was securely and confidently backed up involved the IT team working with CommVault’s agent on their Exchange and SQL servers. They did daily incremental backups, with a schedule of running an entire backup of the data once a week. But this is where the team kept running into trouble. “Because of the large amount of data we had,” says Hicken, “the weekend backup window kept growing. It was running well into the week, like Wednesday and Thursday, and this wasn’t good because it slowed down the rest of the staff’s work.”

Accounting software, marketing materials, CAD drawings, and significant email communication between staff and with clients were increasingly in jeopardy because the IT team had to default to getting fulls only once a month. “We realized we were beyond our capacity,” says Lewis. “We knew that if there was a problem, we would have had to scramble to find out what was missing. We are so information-oriented here though that if Exchange went down, we’d be in deep weeds.”

As luck would have it, the team never did have to do a full server-level restore, only recovering files and emails as needed, though there was an issue of a hiccup with a tape and the team lost the ability to get a needed quarterly backup. But they resolved that issue after quite a bit of effort, which in itself was compounding the issue – too much effort, too little reward, and a backup window that was growing to almost a full week. Add to that Lewis’s and Hicken’s longstanding concern for disaster recovery planning. “Relying on human beings to remember to take tapes home isn’t a good thing,” says Lewis. “If the building burnt down, we’d be in trouble. These things taken together started us thinking that we needed to do something else,” says Lewis.

First Solution Doesn’t Work

Lewis and Hicken started down the road of replication because BCRA installed a server in their Virginia office. The team was confident that with MS replication, they’d be ok. But when the team realized that MS replication doesn’t do file locking, that option was abandoned. “We then tried Peer Software’s PeerSynch, and put a whole dataset on disk and sent it to Virginia where we’d synch it up,” says Lewis. “But we found out that PeerSynch wasn’t keeping up with file mirroring and would go for days trying to catch up. We got the fulls offsite just fine, but the incrementals were not synched up so that means we had 4-5 days worth of data at risk. This was just unacceptable.”

The concept of replication, however, was not abandoned, and these exercises helped Lewis and Hicken think through how it might work if they got the right product. They knew that replicating their data was what was needed both for solid backups and for BCRA’s disaster recovery planning. It was time for something that really worked.

Solution

Fortunately, Lewis and Hicken participated in an Dell AppAssure webinar on the advanced, continuous data protection features of Dell AppAssure, such as replication. “Jon and I looked at one another and said this is what we need,” recalls Lewis. “We started by putting Dell AppAssure in our existing space, then we decided to go the next step and put Dell AppAssure in a data center off-site. Jon tells me I have a lot of green check marks and I sleep like a baby now.”

The excruciating backup window that BCRA experienced was eliminated with Dell AppAssure. BCRA is protecting volumes on four servers, each at different snap intervals depending on risk assessment. The main file server is at 30 minutes, Exchange is every hour, and SQL is 2x a day. “Dell AppAssure is almost hands-off,” says Hicken. “In the morning, I take a glance at it, and it’s always doing its job getting the snaps. Lewis looks to Hicken for info about the reliability of his exchange backups: “I’ve been through the all-nighter trying to recover a database. It’s an amazing comfort to know I’ve got stuff out there replicated, and that if needed, I could restore our Exchange database back in minutes as it was at the last snap” said Lewis.

As for replication, the off-synch that BCRA had to contend with PeerSynch has been solved with Dell AppAssure. “We have servers and a 100MB pipe to the co-lo data center. When I look at Dell AppAssure’s replication information, the backup window is virtually gone. We’re always at the last snap. There is no synch issue, nor lag time.”

With Dell AppAssure’s integrated data replication with compression and deduplication, BCRA gains a comprehensive disaster recovery solution that easily fits into the company’s risk management scenario. “Even though we’re not in the position to do a full day of DR testing, we know that with Dell AppAssure we’re now absolutely managing risk for our customers,” says Lewis. “We’ve got a higher degree of confidence that we’re not going to miss a beat if the building burnt down. We know that we could get it all restored to just right before the fire if need be.”

Results

In addition to replication, disaster recovery confidence, and continuous disk imaging, BCRA has also gained several additional bonus features with Dell AppAssure – features that Lewis and Hicken didn’t necessarily expect. One is storage space savings with Dell AppAssure’s compression and deduplication. “We’re now showing 53-100% in disk space savings,” says Hicken. “When you can access a full volume immediately, that’s impressive. Dell AppAssure saves a lot of space, even though we keep dailies for up to two months.”

The other unexpected benefit is an outstanding return on investment (ROI). “The cost of a loss of a day’s work at BCRA is astronomical,” explains Lewis. “Besides the fact that 45 architects can’t bill for work, any interruption includes the soft costs of hearing our customers saying ‘oh- they lost my data,’ as well as the hard costs of having to get it back, then there’s also the cost of the loss of public confidence. Let me just say that previously, the cost was great compared to the risk we were carrying. Dell AppAssure paid for itself in all these areas.”

Comparing where BCRA was previously to where the company is today, Lewis says, “In the past, we’ve taken unnecessary risks by letting price dictate our solutions. With Dell AppAssure, we’re not taking risks AND we’ve got a good price point. In fact, we’re now in great shape.”

About BCRA

Headquartered in Tacoma, WA and with offices on both the east and west coasts and in Manila, Philippines, BCRA serves clients in 20 markets throughout the United States and Asia with multiple design disciplines, including architecture & interior design, science & engineering, planning & resource management, and visual communication & strategy.