Disk Trumps Tape at City of Santa Cruz

City of Santa Cruz, Calif. recently switched from a
tape-based data storage system to a disk-based system from Revinetix, Inc.

"Our Sentio backup system really gives us peace
of mind," said Brandon Ashby, IT specialist at the City of Santa Cruz. "In
fact, I trust it so much and have the confidence that it works, I feel like I
could actually take a vacation"

The system at the City of Santa Cruz is comprised of 500 clients and 90
servers. In addition to City Hall, this network supports 900 employees of the
city’s Police, Water Treatment and Waste Water Management departments.

For years, the City of Santa Cruz had used a tape backup system.
However, the primary problem with the tape system is that capacity and time
constraints severely limited the amount of data that could be backed up.
"Because of these limitations it was sometimes difficult to complete a
full backup," added Ashby. "Other issues with the tape system were
the IT staff needed to schedule time each week to change out the tapes at
multiple locations, tape storage and unreliable restores".

In addition to the tapes, the City was also using hard
drives to store images and data domains to supplement storage. Compounding the
complexity, there was no commonality of systems among the different locations,
along with concerns over the ever-increasing costs.

To solve these issues, the City determined it was time
to standardize on a single, cohesive and complete solution that would better
meet its enterprise storage management needs.

From tape swap to hot swap
After juggling tape swaps and carting tapes from
location to location, the City’s IT staff determined that it wanted a system
that was easy to take data off site. Tape options were eliminated in favor of
evaluating the disk options available.

"While we were short listing solutions, we
watched a web demo of Revinetix’s backup solutions and we were immediately
struck by how simple, fast and efficient it was to schedule and complete
backups," said Brandon Ashby, IT specialist at the City of Sandy Cruz
Police Department."Additionally, the hot swappable SATA drives gave us
the portability we were seeking."

Revinetix also stood out from other vendors as it
offered an all-in-one, cross-functional solution. The cross functionality
capability means that the City is able to have identical devices installed at
multiple locations. In the event of a disaster or storage failure, IT has the
freedom of cross functionality to use the device at any location to restore
data for the entire system.

"Many companies we evaluated wanted to sell us
software, but we were on our own to get our own hardware," said Steven
Cheney, City of Santa Cruz
network division manager. "This type of model really added to the cost and
also put us in the position to again deal with multiple vendors. We wanted a
partner that provided everything hardware, software, service and support
under one roof, and at an affordable price."

The City of Santa
Cruz installed four Sentio HD appliances. They are
housed at City Hall, the Police Department and the Water Treatment and Waste
Water Treatment plants. The Sentio line of appliances include Xeon
high-performance processors, Gigabit and Fast Ethernet controllers,
dual-redundant power supplies, SATA drives of varying
capacities and RAID 5 technology.
Backups are automated, and restores are quick and reliable. Archive
drives are hot swappable for removal and offsite storage. Sentio
appliances are compatible with Solaris, Linux, and Windows 2003 and 2000.

Each of the installed devices is storing many more TB
of data than the tape system was able to accommodate. Additionally, the IT team
now has a lot of ‘comfort room’ for future storage needs, as there is
plenty of available storage space available on the devices.

"We evaluated a lot of vendors and talked with a
lot of references," said Cheney. "In the end; Revinetix offered
everything we were looking for and fit within our budget. With the responsibility
we have to be protective and prudent of taxpayer dollars, their pricing model
made the most sense. Its inclusive site license compared to the per-client
license fee required by other vendors saves us money."

"If someone were to ask me about this device, I
would tell them its biggest selling point is that it is an all-in-one
solution," said Cheney. "Before Revinetix, we were consumed with
monitoring tape drives, backup servers and the storage of the tapes Ð all
separate devices. Now, we have a single device that is really a time saving,
reliable, cost effective solution for our backup needs."

Fast, easy installation, easy backups
Installation of the backup system is designed to be
simple. Quick start set up and training are available for self-service viewing
on YouTube.

"The system was straightforward and very
smooth," said Carlos Silva, network administrator at the City of Santa
Cruz Water Treatment Department. "The best part is I haven’t touched the
box since I configured it. It just works."

An additional benefit of the new system is the interface. Because the interface looks and acts the same at
all sites, IT staff has reported a significant decrease in the time spent
managing scheduling and backups.

"We also really like the speed," said Silva.
"With our tape system, a full backup of our primary file servers took a
minimum of two days. Compare that time to the latest backup to our disk system,
where were able to complete a full backup in only 14 hours. We have also
eradicated the tape-spanning problem."

One of the factors in quick backups is the RevOS
de-duplication technology. This technology ensures that only a single copy of a
file is stored. The result is faster archiving and faster, more accurate
restores because only a single version of any particular data file is stored.

A recent enhancement enabling directory browsing
across devices simplifies drill down examination of the Exchange mail server
and other applications during a backup, saving additional time and helping to
pinpoint any issues.

Bare metal data restores
As it is always a question of when, not if, a data
restore is going to be required, the City’s IT staff especially liked the
capability of the bare-metal restore.

With the tape system, the main issue was being able to
recover data. IT staff could see back-ups were running, but because of several
failed attempts to restore data from tapes, there was no confidence that the
data would be accessible. The issue was that there was only one safe
drive in the tape auto loader. It would store the data, but experience had
shown that recovering any of that data was pretty much impossible.

Another concern was the viability of the data that was
stored on the tapes. An instance of a data failure at the Police Station
required four-month-old data to be retrieved from the tape archives. The
particular file was located, but the tape space had filled during archiving.
The result was the file was partially stored on two tapes. Despite efforts to
try to ‘splice’ the two partial files and recover the needed data, it
was impossible and the needed data was unrecoverable. The tape system proved
worthless when it was needed most.

The Revinetix Bare Metal Restore (BMR) eliminates this
problem of unrecoverable files. By creating a complete disk image to be stored
on the appliance, the BMR software can get users backup and productive
after a system crash. Virtually any hard drive can be cloned using this
utility.

The disk system also enables data to be stored on the
RAID drive for accessibility. The City stores data on the RAID for four
weeks before it is archived. The RAID storage speeds file recovery. If IT
receives a report that a file has been accidently deleted and needs to be
restored, the file can be located and restored in about five minutes.

Set it and forget it
The City’s IT team reports that the Sentio is so
automated and reliable that the only time they interact with the device now is
when a notification is received or when a SATA drive needs to be swapped out.

In addition to backups and reliable restores,
the automated status updates and notifications are helping to streamline
processes. IT staff now get a status on the devices, what drives are
rebuilding, and the job status. While the team anticipated that it would
receive notification emails for jobs that failed, the receipt of notifications
regarding the health and hardware and ‘health’ of the device has been
helpful for planning and management of the system.

"Going from tape to disk is like night and
day," said Ken Morgan, IT Specialist III for City of Santa Cruz. "There is no more having to
pick what data we’re going to back up and what we’re not. We have the
confidence that we have the capacity and capability to protect the City’s
mission critical information. Our Sentio is the ultimate in set it and forget
it," added Morgan.