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University of Maryland finds “peace of mind” with AppAssure Software

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Challenge: Fast backup and recovery in a complex Exchange environment

Solution: AppAssure’s backup and disaster recovery capabilities

Results: Protected Exchange environment from all sorts of disasters with backups and recoveries in minutes

Background

Academic departments at the University of Maryland rely on systems administration teams to deliver all IT services including e-mail. System Analyst Carlos Luceno and his team watch over the e-mail system used by electrical engineering, physics, and chemistry department faculty and staff. Not only was his backup system difficult to use in normal situations, it offered no disaster recovery help at all. That was keeping Luceno up at night. And then he found AppAssure .

The Nightmare

When Carlos Luceno transitioned his e-mail environment from Exchange 2003 to 2007 he decided it was time to change backup solutions as well. He and his team were on the hook to protect the mailboxes of professors and administrative staff in three academic departments at the University of Maryland and those mailboxes contain critical information.

“We were using a plug-in for a backup solution which worked well but it was a night-mare to use,” remembers Luceno. “It wasn’t going to work at all for disaster recovery and we wanted to be able to bring the whole system back up quickly if needed. All our servers run virtually and AppAssure works well in that situation so we gave it a try.”

Everyday Peace of Mind

Having used AppAssure for over six months, Luceno is happy to report that he hasn’t had to recover from any disasters though he says “the peace of mind I have is handy. I know I can get my whole system back up fast.”

Luceno and his team are using AppAssure to continuously backup Exchange and are discovering real benefits over the processes that had been in place. “We used to run incremental backups through the week and then full backups on the weekend,” reports Luceno. “With AppAssure we don’t have that crazy resource suck every weekend. Every night  the nightly incremental backups were putting a real strain on Exchange.”

AppAssure takes snapshots of Luceno’s Exchange server every 15 minutes and then rolls up data every night. Luceno has no idea how long the roll-up takes, explaining, “It’s so insignificant I haven’t even timed it.”

Good for the Environment

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Luceno is quick to point out that his Exchange 2007/Windows Server 2008 environment does pose challenges. “We have a complex environment and all sorts of little disasters can happen,” says Luceno. “We used to have a perpetual fear that something would go really wrong and we wouldn’t be able to fx it. With AppAssure, I know that I can get Exchange back no matter what goes wrong.”

AppAssure installation was easy, upgrades have been easy and Luceno reports that AppAssure support is “great.” “It’s nice to know there’s someone knowledgeable to talk to,” says Luceno. “No one likes to do backups and it’s great when a product just…works.”

About University of Maryland
University of Maryland

The University of Maryland is the state’s flagship university and one of the nation’s preeminent public research universities. Ranked No. 18 among public universities by U.S. News & World Report, it has 28 academic programs in the U.S News Top 10 and 78 in the Top 25. The Institute of Higher Education (Jiao Tong University, Shanghai), which ranks the world’s top universities based on research, puts Maryland at No. 37 in the world and No. 12 among U.S. public universities. The university has produced six Nobel laureates, seven Pulitzer Prize winners, more than 40 members of the national academies and scores of Fulbright scholars. The university is recognized for its diversity, with underrepresented students comprising one-third of the student population.

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