Flagler College gets Storage Savings of 84%
Challenge: Physical location loss with 1TB of data
Solution: AppAssure’s disaster recovery solution and virtualization capabilities
Results: Backup at 400GB, ability to replicate in another physical location
Before AppAssure, the biggest fear that Flagler Colleges’ Technology Services Network Engineer Brendan Hourihan had was not being able to recover something he was responsible for from a data retention perspective and not being able to meet the levels of support that his IT team strives to maintain. “In colleges of our size, a student to IT staff ratio is usually about 140:1. Here at Flagler, it’s about 425:1. If it plugs into a wall, we support it. We are the focal point for everything: telephones, computers, printers, you name it! We do quite a bit with not very much, but we’re able to do great things.“
Because they do it all, each time they choose IT solutions the College’s management needs, they are very strategic. “The staff and students are, in a sense, our customers and so, we want to use tools that work for us not against us, that yield efficiency so we can strive to maintain a high customer service level,” notes Hourihan. “We want people to call and we want to give them a fast, personal response. We want to solve their problems. Period. Knowing that I had a solution in place that couldn’t effectively do what I needed it to do was horrible.”
Which is why Hourihan was blown away by AppAssure.
AppAssure’s options and features are far simpler than anything else Hourihan had come across in his 15 years of working with of backup and disaster recovery solutions. “Functionality wise, AppAssure has an extremely easy, logical approach for set up. I did it in one night,” notes Hourihan. With AppAssure’s advanced de-duplication and compression, Hourihan’s disk-space savings have improved by 6-7 times. With his previous solution, he was going through 9.6TB every 2 weeks; with AppAssure, he’s used just over 1.5TB in the same time period. That’s 84% storage savings.
In addition, AppAssure gave Hourihan a solution that allowed the College to take a “quantum leap” in providing co-location facility support with high availability – all at a great price.
“Now, I have no data recovery concerns at all. I sleep better at night – AppAssure has a huge advocate in us here at Flagler College!”
 Brendan Hourihan Technology Services Network Engineer |
About Flagler College
Florida’s Flagler College is a growing dynamic institution of higher education with over 2400 students and 300 faculty and staff just four miles from the Atlantic Ocean, in the historic tourist town of St. Augustine, Florida. With 34 protected servers and counting, Technology Services Network Engineer, Brendan Hourihan is part of a 6-person IT department that supports it all.
