Are You Selling The Benefits Of A New Backup Solution?

Vassar College, a liberal arts college in New York, had a need to protect vital computing infrastructure, including file servers, dynamic network services, e-mail, and data storage. The systems administration was responsible for ensuring the integrity of 10 TB of data stored on Network Appliance NAS (network attached storage) filers, as well as an additional 5 TB of additional RAID (redundant array of independent disks) storage on older arrays.

According to Derek Balling, manager of systems administration for Vassar, the old backup and recovery solution couldn't keep pace with storage that was expanding at an annual rate of 30%. "The task of backing up crucial data became cumbersome and increasingly unreliable," he explains. "It quickly became apparent that we needed to make a complete change. Moreover, it was difficult to complete daily incremental backups within an 8-hour window. Recovering files didn't always work, and managing the system took so much time we couldn't adequately protect all our data, exposing the college to undue risks." In particular, a nagging concern was the inability to properly back up Vassar's MySQL databases, which contained crucial user e-mail information, networking configurations, Web applications, user data, and a Vassar College encyclopedia project.

While looking to replace the older backup system, the team developed a checklist of desired features and functionality. Among the top criteria was support for MySQL databases, using existing disks for storage using virtual tape libraries (VTLs), and automatic disk-to-tape archival. In the end, only BakBone's NetVault: Backup let Vassar leverage its five large RAID arrays for disk-to-disk storage repositories without impacting network performance. VAR Saturn Business Systems installed the complete solution, which included NetVault: Backup and MySQL Application Plug-in Module (APM). The installation took two weeks.

With its new data protection platform in place, Vassar College has been able to increase the size of its backups by 300% while staying within allotted time limits. In addition, the college has greater flexibility in recovering MySQL data, as BakBone's MySQL APM supports full, incremental, and point-in-time restores. A final benefit to the new backup system is that, by achieving new levels of automation, scalability, and cross-platform data protection, Vassar College has been able to reduce administrative costs by 80%.