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Accomplishments
Furniture Brands reduced backup and
off-site archiving costs by 50% and simultaneously added
higher-availability recovery capabilities.
Goals
Furniture Brands management tasked its DR team with improving system
recovery time in the event of a disaster and achieving more reliable,
and auditable backups. DG Technology Consulting was already the
incumbent solution provider and business partner. DG Technology brought
SecureAgent Software to the table to help Furniture Brands reduce costs
and improve the efficiency of their disaster recovery processes. By
partnering with DG Technology and SecureAgent, Furniture Brands was able
to provide better service for their business users while managing a
tight budget. The evaluation process was valuable in demonstrating the
technology and solution to the business constituents.
“We saved half the cost, and are now able to recover from an
outage 4 times faster than we were before”,
explains Lacey Griffith, the Furniture Brands Director of IT Operations
who spearheaded the project to bring in the SecureAgent® Secure Data Solution®.
“Over a 3-year period, we will save nearly $300,000. The entire
project pays for itself in 10 months,” Griffith added.
Tape Backups: A Thing of the Past?
Large recovery and archiving companies
like Sun-Gard, IBM, and Iron Mountain are all introducing tape
alternatives in one form or another.
The business focus is now on limiting the role of tape, and utilizing
virtual tape technologies to improve the reliability of backups,
decrease recovery times, and save companies money.
The Solution
SecureAgent’s Secure Data Solution
offers a unique patented approach to migrating away from today’s common
tape backup strategy onto a coordinated intelligent network of virtual
tape systems. Unlike any other disk-based backup solution, the
individual SecureAgent virtual tape units all operate in con-junction
with one another to make sure backups at each location occur
successfully, and to provide each requested tape wherever it needs to be
mounted. This is accomplished using the patented, intelligent catalog
system so that every location knows about every tape image in an
enterprise, regardless of where the image might reside. If a system
needs a particular tape mounted, it simply issues a mount request in the
normal fashion. The intelligent catalog handles the task of moving the
image from wherever it is, to wherever it needs to be. The catalog
system also handles moving data from old-style physical tapes to virtual
tape on disk whenever necessary, so integration with existing tape
infrastructure is practically seamless.
“The Secure Data Solution has changed the way we handle our entire
recovery process.
We are confident we can recover from a significant disaster in far less
time than we ever could have in the past, and we’re paying less to do
it.”
- Randy Wilburn, Furniture Brands Manager of Technical Services
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About Furniture Brands International
Furniture Brands International is a leading designer and retailer of
home furnishings, with annual sales in the range of $1.3 billion. Its
data backup environment faces unique challenges. Furniture Brands
International has successfully integrated some of the biggest names in
the furniture industry under a single umbrella, including Lane,
Thomasville, Drexel Heritage, Broyhill, Henredon, Hickory Chair, and
many others. The assimilation of these formerly independent companies
required integrating a wide variety of disparate systems and backup
strategies.
“One of the things that makes the
SecureAgent Secure Data Solution so attractive is
its ability to handle all of our different systems with one solution,”
Griffith explains.
The Secure Data Solution does this by
emulating a customer’s existing tape infrastructure so that only minimal
changes are necessary to introduce the solution to a new environment.
The SDS can often accomplish backups and off-site movement of data that
would require two or even three other products to accomplish.
Benefits:
Complete Integration
Furniture Brands can now back up their iSeries, VSE, and z/OS systems on
a single virtual tape system.
When comparing the SDS to other solutions, SecureAgent is far less
expensive because one sys-tem can handle everything.
Security
Every image Furniture Brands backs up to disk is automatically
encrypted. No unencrypted images are ever sent off-site anymore.
The Secure Data Solution was a critical piece of our regulatory
compliance effort.
Elimination of Tape
Expensive arrangements to move tapes off-site nightly and then at a
later date ship them to a recovery site are no longer necessary.
A reciprocal Secure Data Solution at each site backs up each data
center. Recovery is automated and can all be done remotely with full
security.
“The Secure Data Solution allowed us
to move our backup window to earlier in the evening, allowing us to
eliminate the need for a third-shift operator who previously had to be
on-site to manage the tapes and backup,” said Griffith.
Remote Administration
Disaster Recovery planners can now begin the DR process remotely.
Furniture Brands can find particular VOLSERs, mount them on drives,
initiate the IPL with the remote HMC tool, and respond to all messages
from encrypted consoles. No one needs to even be present at the DR
facility to get the DR process underway. This alone saves Furniture
Brands hours in travel time.
Improve Recovery Point Objective
Backups now require a far shorter period of time, so flash copies of the
DASD are done multiple times per day.
This has dramatically improved Furniture Brands Recovery Point
Objective.
When companies embark on a project to reduce or eliminate archaic tape
backup solutions, problems integrating years of these disparate
solutions can become insurmountable. The Secure Data Solution allowed
Furniture Brands to easily overcome these problems and to quickly
implement a solution that saved money, accommodated all of their
mainframe and iSeries systems, accommodated their diverse backup
infrastructure, and solved regulatory and auditing issues.
About SecureAgent Software®
SecureAgent Software has been helping customers manage sensitive data
for more than 20 years. Many of the largest banks, credit card
processors, communications companies, and airline in both the US and
Europe use SecureAgent products in critical areas of their daily
operations. SecureAgent products play an integral role in secure remote
console access, data backup and recovery, advanced automation,
integrated tape management, and disaster recovery.
About DG Technology Consulting
DG Technology Consulting is committed to supply best-in-class technology
services and solutions that help our clients meet the changing world of
information technology. A key component for success is to ensure that IT
solutions are aligned with the business. DG Technology focuses on three
key areas: Information Security, Information Automation, and Information
Management across all platforms—desktop to mainframe. DG Technology
leverages years of experience and an extensive network to supply the
right solutions at the right price.
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