Startup outsources its server backups: rapid growth stressed IT staff's ability to keep up with backup-and-restore tasks

Communications News, Dec, 2003 by Elizabeth M. Ferrarini

Glenn Timmons, information technology director at Incentive Systems, Bedford, Mass., wanted to build an IT infrastructure that would accommodate the company's growth but would not saddle a small IT department with a lot of unnecessary tasks. At the time, Incentive Systems, a sales automation software company, had 50 employees and three Windows NT servers.

The corporate office in Bedford had a server, and so did each of the two sales and services offices--one in Burlingame, Calif., and the other in Chicago. By the end of 2000, the company had 160 employees relying on 13 Windows NT servers--11 in the corporate office and one in each of the remote offices. Servers in the remote offices connected to the corporate LAN via a 384-kbps frame relay link. A mix of Dell PowerEdge 6300s and PowerEdge 6400s provided a total storage capacity of about a half terabyte.

Building the IT infrastructure called for breaking up the three servers by application and putting specific ones on dedicated servers. The IT department continued this procedure as new servers came online. For example, one server handles Lotus Notes used for e-mail, while several other servers store the product's source code. Other servers function as file servers for Microsoft Office applications, as well as database servers.

Next, Timmons looked at what routine storage-management tasks made sense not to burden the IT staff with, but to put in the hands of a third party. How to handle server backups ranked high on the list.

While a consistent backup schedule is critical for any type of data protection, he says that as the company added servers the IT department would have to devote more hours to this exacting, and sometimes unpredictable task. He also had the problem of not having IT professionals available in the remote locations.

Backing up servers would mean assigning an IT staff member to take responsibility for the tasks. It also would mean training individuals in the remote office to handle the backup tasks. All individuals would have to change the tapes every day, making sure that tapes were sent off-site on the appropriate days. If the backup did not run, they would have to figure out why not and correct the problem. Timmons says, "We didn't want any IT staff members devoting his or her time to the backup and restore tasks."

Timmons quickly convinced the vice president of engineering to use a storage service provider that specialized in server-to server backup and restore. "AmeriVault, the Waltham, Mass.-based company we selected, saved the IT department from buying a lot of unnecessary backup devices, media and software," Timmons offers, "and from making sure tapes got sent off site consistently. Most of all, the service freed the IT staff to work on other pressing assignments. Since AmeriVault stores our data live on disks, we had the added advantage of restoring files, even directories, with only a few mouse clicks.

"If we hadn't gone with this service, someone would have to spend at least four hours a day backing up all of the servers. Of course, the task could take most of the day if a backup failed."

Unlike tape backup, which copies the entire file each time, the delta technology transparently takes only the changes since the last backup for that server. As the IT department installed each server, a full backup of the server's files was accomplished automatically.

From this initial backup, a mapping strategy is created in an index rile. Each time a backup occurs, the service looks for files that have block changes, and then locates those changed blocks, compresses and encrypts them, and sends them over the wire.

Initially, the IT department loaded the proprietary backup-and-restore agent software on each of the servers, as well as on workstations at the corporate site. The software also was loaded remotely on the servers in the field. The IT department then set up each server's automated backup schedule, with various setting options providing for backing up certain directories, or file types. Each server's backup usually occurs in the middle of the night. Just the changes travel over the wide area network's frame relay lines.

Each time a backup occurs, an e-mail message is sent to the IT department saying whether or not the backup ran successfully. A successful backup e-mail message tells how long the backup took, how much was backed up and when the backup happened. Otherwise, the e-mail message says the backup failed. "There were a few times where the network connection didn't get through on the first try," Timmons says.

In addition to not needing anyone at the remote sites to handle such tasks, Timmons says, "The monthly cost to back up each server is less than what it would cost us to pay for tape media and to send the tapes off site."

Restoring files on each of the servers requires a minimum of human intervention. "We just have to select the files, directories or entire drives we are being asked to restore from, and then we answer a couple of questions about where to place the data," Timmons says. "Finally, our server then forwards the files to the designated location, even to the remote servers."