Dell AppAssure Software Gives Lincoln Electric System a 3-in-1 Solution: Item-Level Restore, Simple Backup Capabilities, Seamless Disaster Recovery

Aaron Anderson, Senior IT Administrator at Lincoln Electric System (LES) and his 25 colleagues in LES’s IT department are like many IT Pros – putting out any IT “fires” that crop up for LES’s 450+ employees. “We make sure everything is running smoothly, easily, and efficiently – roughly 120 servers. We problem solve and then fix the issue.”

Dell AppAssure software permits Windows Server backup, Microsoft Exchange backup, and MS SQL server backup

What Aaron and all busy IT Pros know is that there’s always the possibility of something going wrong. “That comes with the territory,” explains Aaron. “What really scares me, though is the unknown – when I don’t know the answer and I call a support person for our third-party app and THEY don’t know what to do, that’s when it’s really a problem. When there’s no answer – that’s what I don’t like.”

So when LES switched from Lotus Domino to Microsoft Exchange last year, Aaron and his team knew they’d need a really robust backup and recovery solution that gave them all the functionality they wanted, from disaster recovery to granular, item-level restore. Says Aaron, “I’ve been here about 11 years and have seen 4-5 backup solutions over that time and when someone is in charge of backups, it becomes a lament. But when my supervisor was introduced to Dell AppAssure, and we did the web demo, we were so impressed that we bought 2 licenses for Exchange just to begin with and 2 for SQL shortly after.”

Aaron says that Dell AppAssure is working great so far and it’s doing what they want it to. “All the item-level restore tests are really smooth. And the admin interface is very simple and nice. It shows me whether a server has been backed up or not, and I like how it’s natively set to backup to disk. The built-in de-dup is great and I like how Dell AppAssure notifies me if there are any problems.”

Lincoln Electric System’s IT department is so satisfied with the Dell AppAssure solution, that they’ve already purchased SQL license for a future project. “We’re getting into Sharepoint and so we needed a way to restore that one pdf that the CEO deletes at an item level. First we’re working on getting more disk space and then we’ll do the SQL server backups.” Aaron is already glad that Dell AppAssure for SQL is now on the team.

“It’s all working really well and we’re happy!”

About Lincoln Electric System

Lincoln Electric System (LES) takes care of all of the power needs for residents and businesses in Lincoln, Nebraska. The company generates, purchases, transmits, and distributes electricity for approximately 127,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Lincoln and surrounding communities. LES has interests in fossil-fueled power plants and wind energy facilities; the utility also purchases power through contracts with other generation utilities, such as the Nebraska Public Power District and the Western Area Power Administration, and it markets power to wholesale customers.