City of Safford: Continuous Availability and Instant Recovery

S u ccess
Stor y
City of Safford:
Continuous Availability
and Instant Recovery
HIGHLIGHTS
Location:
The City of Safford, Arizona
Industry:
Local Government
Customer Profile:
The City of Safford is the Graham county
seat located in southeastern Arizona.
The IT department supports all city and
county Windows infrastructure.
Business Challenge:
• To recover as rapidly as possible and avoid the full day outages that the City had suffered on their Exchange and SQL servers
• Serious concern about data loss between tape backups
• Needed the ability to recover individual objects, such as files, quickly to meet legal and compliance requirements
Solution:
• Asempra’s Business Continuity Server (BCS)
Benefits:
• Continuously protects four servers with 1 TB of Exchange, SQL, and Windows file server data
• Continuous availability and instant recovery of Exchange and SQL as rapidly as 30 seconds
• Easy recovery of individual objects for legal and compliance purposes
• Dramatically reduced time, cost, and complexity with the BCS compared to previous tape-based protection scheme
“The BCS has paid for itself several times over . . .”
— Derek Kruger, IT and Communications Supervisor
The Problems
Derek Kruger, IT and Communications Supervisor for the City of Safford, was fielding
another call from one of the city’s department heads wondering when the department
would be able to access their critical Exchange e-mails. The City had suffered an
Exchange failure and Kruger and his team were in the middle of the grueling full day
process of restoring the city’s Exchange data from tape. This full day outage was the
second the City had suffered in a year: the first a SQL failure that had also required
a full day for recovery.
Kruger knew the city’s traditional tape backup software and hardware were woefully
inadequate to meet the city’s Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time
Objectives (RTO). Additionally, Kruger was concerned about data loss: “We were
nervous about the strong possibility of data loss between our nightly backups.”
In addition, the city had recently been involved in a lawsuit and it was extremely
time-consuming and costly for the IT team to recover critical files for the legal team.
With the city totally dependent on their Exchange, SQL, and Windows file server
infrastructure, Kruger realized he needed to find a solution that delivered continuous
availability with near zero data loss, as well as being cost effective and easy to use.
The City of Safford Selects Asempra
It was at a regional trade show in Phoenix where Kruger first saw the Asempra
Business Continuity Server (BCS). When Kruger saw the BCS, he knew it was the
answer to the city’s continuous availability and data protection problems: “The first
time I saw the BCS I knew it was the right solution for the City. The intuitive BCS
interface coupled with the continuous availability and instant recovery the BCS
provides made the choice easy.”
Success
Stor y
Kruger was attracted to the BCS’s ability to protect SQL, Exchange, and Windows File Server
applications and data through a patented approach that captures and indexes all data events,
creating a virtualized data store that allows instantaneous recovery to any point-in-time. Using
Asempra’s virtualized recovery and data protection technology (Virtual On-Demand Recovery™),
Exchange and SQL can be recovered as fast as 30 seconds after a storage failure. The BCS
allows Kruger’s team to “roll back the clock” so that applications and their data are immediately
available at any point-in-time just as they were before outages occurred. The BCS delivers
complete, uncorrupted data at all times, eliminating the need for multiple, costly manual recoveries that were frequently required by the City of Safford’s reliance on traditional tape backup and
restore.
Working closely with Asempra, Kruger identified the essential Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
that would meet the business goals and objectives of the various city departments. Asempra
architected a solution for Kruger that employed a single BCS appliance to protect two SQL
servers, the city’s Exchange server, and several Windows file servers. With this configuration,
the city continuously protects over 1 terabyte (TB) of data with the BCS and delivers an
Exchange and SQL recovery service level agreement (SLA) measured in seconds. The BCS
was selected over point products from several leading backup vendors.
“Asempra’s BCS ensures that we meet our SLAs by recovering Exchange and SQL server data
within 30 seconds after any storage failure,” said Kruger. “We use the BCS to protect our files,
email, and SQL applications and data, and since our deployment we’ve been able to recover
from any failure in seconds, saving days of IT time and costs. The BCS has paid for itself several
times over in the 6 months since its installation.”
IP LAN
“There’s simply no other
Dell
Servers
product on the market today
BCS
that offers this same speed
of recovery with an equal
amount of simplicity or
versatility . . . Asempra’s
SAN
Dell Storage Arrays
DAS Attached
SAS and SCSI
MPC Storage Array
SAN Attached iSCSI
BCS delivers the goods . . .
Asempra is solving SME
challenges with a level of
innovation that is simply
missing in many other
products.”
— The Taneja Group
October 2007
Business Continuity Server Installation at the City of Safford
About the City of Safford
Located in southeastern Arizona, the City of Safford is the Graham County seat and serves as
home to over 9,000 people. The City of Safford was established in 1874 and serves as a regional
retail, government, and service hub for Graham County and the surrounding area. Primarily an
agricultural area, the City of Safford has also developed as a mining and light-manufacturing center.
About Asempra Technologies, Inc.
Asempra Technologies is a leading provider of continuous availability solutions for Windows
applications and data. Named as a “Best of Connections 2007” Finalist in October 2007, and
“Outstanding Choice” by ByteandSwitch in September 2007, Asempra’s Business Continuity
Server™ enables application availability and data recovery in seconds or minutes, from any
location, at any point-in-time, while delivering near zero data loss. The BCS solves many critical
concerns of small to medium sized businesses, providing continuous availability, data protection,
disaster recovery, business continuity, and recovery management in one easy to use solution.
For more information, please call 408.215.5800 or visit www.asempra.com
Asempra Technologies
3200 Patrick Henry Drive • Santa Clara, CA 95054 • Phone: 408.215.5800 • Fax: 408.215.5802
www.asempra.com
© 2007-2008 Asempra Technologies. All rights reserved. Asempra, the Asempra logo, Asempra Business Continuity Server and Virtual On-Demand Recovery are trademarks or registered trademarks of Asempra Technologies in the United States and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Asempra Technologies makes no warranties, expressed
or implied, by operation of law or otherwise, relating to this document, the products or the computer software programs described herein. The information contained in this document is subject to
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