Kajaani University of Applied Sciences safeguards project data with Arcserve Backup

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1 Customer Case Study February 2013 Kajaani University of Applied Sciences safeguards project data with Arcserve Backup CLIENT PROFILE Industry: Education Employees: 230 BUSINESS CHALLENGE SOLUTION BENEFIT The Kajaani University of KUAS runs two data Arcserve Backup and As well as safeguarding Applied Sciences (KUAS) is centres, one of which Arcserve D2D protect student and faculty one of the most advanced is almost entirely run up to 100 virtual servers data, the university s universities in Finland, by students. With data and three terabytes of new strategy helps and offers a range of hosted in the facility data at any one KUAS students learn vocational degree courses. growing in criticality and time. Backups are the importance of It has 230 employees volume, the university now automated and recovery management and 2,000 students. needed a more data can be recovered in preparation for the robust approach to in minutes. workplace. recovery management.

2 BUSINESS Developing Finland s future skills The Kajaani University of Applied Sciences (KUAS) is an innovative educational institute in Finland and renowned for being one of the most advanced in the country. The university was established in 1992 and has around 230 members of staff, including 120 faculty, and 2,000 students. The university offers eight degree programmes in Finnish and three degree programmes in English at BA level, as well as five Masters degree programmes in Finnish. Its core focus areas are activity tourism, information systems, nursing and healthcare, and mechanical and mining engineering. KUAS s Vision 2020 is to advance the development of expertise, trade and commerce in north and east Finland. CHALLENGE Protecting student and faculty data and projects KUAS is focused on preparing students for life and work after university. To provide students with hands-on experience, one of its two data centres is managed almost solely by students on its IT administration course. Although the student-run facility does not host university administration systems, it does support critical Web services and student and faculty projects, as well as providing a sandbox environment for test and development. Joona Tolonen, Lecturer in IT and Data Centre Administration at KUAS, comments, If we experience a hardware issue or a student accidentally causes a problem that results in data loss, project outcomes could be affected. This could disrupt students learning programmes and faculty research activities. The data centre is heavily virtualised, with the number of physical servers ranging from 20 to 100, depending on the projects that are running at the time. A short delay to manufacturing, order processing or delivery can result in lost revenues.

3 Data centre backup processes were being managed manually on an ad hoc basis, and lacked centralisation and consistency. Tolonen comments, We had no structured strategy in place for backing up data centre systems, which increased the risk of data loss. The university recognised that with both systems and data growing in volume and criticality, this approach was no longer adequate. We needed to reduce potential data loss, downtime and the recovery time for our production environment, comments Tolonen. To provide the level of data protection required by the university, it decided to implement an enterprise-standard solution, moving away from overnight tape backup to a disk-based incremental backup system with higher backup frequency. The decision was also influenced by the university s need to lead by example. As Tolonen explains, As well as improving data protection, we wanted to demonstrate best practices in backup to our students to help prepare them for working in the IT industry. SOLUTION Automated and unified backup KUAS embarked on an evaluation process to identify the most appropriate backup solution for its needs. Two students were involved in the decision-making process as well as the university s IT team. Arcserve Backup and Arcserve D2D were selected and deployed in early Solution experts from local Arcserve partner Citius.net assisted with the implementation, as well as a student who documented the process as part of their thesis. Arcserve Backup protects the entire virtualised data centre environment, which including images for hundreds of virtual machines and SQL data, totalling around three terabytes, explains Tolonen. Backup is fully automated and scheduled to run at varying time intervals, depending on the critically of the systems and data being backed up. For example, the production environment which includes website hosting, is backed up Arcserve Backup protects the entire virtualised data centre environment.

4 more frequently. While the semi-production environment, where student projects are hosted, and the sandbox environment are backed up less often. Arcserve D2D is used to back up critical services, such as Back-up servers, Domain controllers, and vcenter etc. The solution simplifies disk-to-disk backup and provides bare-metal restore to dissimilar hardware, comments Tolonen. At present, the Arcserve solutions are mainly managed by the university s system administrator, but as the solutions become more familiar, students will be increasingly involved in administering backup and recovery processes. The solution is very easy to use, which means our students can manage recovery under the supervision of our faculty administrator, adds Tolonen. With a unified solution capable of protecting both virtual and physical environment, we can simplify ongoing management. BENEFIT Faster data recovery across multiple platforms If KUAS loses a file or server through student error or hardware failure, it can now recover systems and data in just a few minutes, compared to several hours before. Due to the educational nature of the data centre, we have a disparate and varied environment. Using Arcserve Recovery Management solutions, backup and recovery is seamless despite the multiple platforms in use, comments Tolonen. Using the Arcserve solutions enables KUAS to: Maximise efficiency for IT administrators Safeguard student and faculty data and research projects Provide higher quality services from its student data centre. We can provide more reliable access to IT systems and services.

5 Tolonen comments, With a robust recovery management strategy, we can provide our students and faculty with more reliable access to IT systems and services. We can also better prepare students for working in the IT industry by demonstrating a best practice approach to recovery management. ABOUT CITIUSNET Founded in 1987, CitiusNet provides a range of data protection services focused around backup infrastructure and applications. CitiusNet has over 15 years of expertise in implementing Arcserve solutions focused around storage, data management and protection. They have proven to be a reliable IT partner in designing and maintaining IT solutions that support their customers business operations. They continually invest in development, in enhancing their competences and increasing customer service. Copyright 2014 Arcserve (USA), LLC and its affiliates and subsidiaries. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. The information and results illustrated here are based upon the speaker s experiences with the referenced software product in a variety of environments, which may include production and non production environments.