CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY Comune della Spezia protects service continuity with integrated backup and replication from CA Technologies CLIENT PROFILE Industry: Local government Company: Municipality of La Spezia (Comune della Spezia) Employees: 800 Revenue: 70 million BUSINESS Comune della Spezia administers a city with a population of 95,000, providing a wide range of services to citizens and enterprises. Many of these services make use of electronic documents. CHALLENGE Comune della Spezia needs to protect critical data to safeguard the continuity of key activities. Loss of this data would result in major disruption. To meet its needs, the organisation needed a cost-effective data replication solution. SOLUTION The organisation now uses CA ARCserve Replication, as well as CA ARCserve Backup, to protect its systems and data. In the event of an incident, replicated data can be recovered in just one hour. BENEFIT A cost-efficient replication solution provides effective disaster recovery for all critical data to meet compliance needs and ensure service continuity. agility made possible
Business Providing advanced public administration services to a mid-sized city Located on the coast in north-west Italy, the city of La Spezia has a population of approximately 95,000 and a lively economy including major manufacturing companies that build ships, machinery and defence equipment. The local municipality (Comune della Spezia) provides a wide range of public administration services to both citizens and enterprises. This includes managing the registry office, granting construction permits, planning for new developments, operating 50 public schools and the municipal police corps. The municipality also owns shares of a number of public companies providing other services, such as transport. The municipality of La Spezia is especially advanced in the use of IT tools to gradually eliminate the need for printed paper documents. Citizens and companies residing in La Spezia can use online services to apply for a range of permits and to download registry office documents; internal government processes are also based on electronic documents, while a Geographical Information System allows the municipal staff to track all details of buildings and infrastructures. Key to the intensive use of IT tools are two virtual private networks connecting the city hall with 30 branch offices throughout the city. Plans are in place for replacing these HDSL-based networks with an optical fibre infrastructure. Challenge Protecting critical data to ensure service continuity Being one of the most advanced Italian municipalities in the adoption of electronic documents, Comune della Spezia is highly reliant on its IT infrastructure, which includes 25 physical servers and 600 clients. The prompt availability of all information is key to the operation of the municipality. Losing our data would prevent us from providing services to citizens and enterprises. Our own internal government process would also be disrupted, explains Giorgio Pellitteri, Director of IT Services at the Municipality of La Spezia. To protect its systems and data, Comune della Spezia therefore needs reliable backup and recovery management. For some data, however, the organisation requires more stringent safeguards to prevent data loss. Following the change of a hardware platform in 2011, the municipality of La Spezia decided it needed to strengthen its recovery capabilities with replication. 02
As Pellitteri explains, We back up all our data, but for three specific kinds of information this is not enough. We also needed a replication solution to be able to quickly resume service in case a disaster happens. Losing our data would prevent us from providing services to citizens and enterprises. Giorgio Pellitteri Director of IT Services, Municipality of La Spezia The critical types of information, stored on three dedicated servers, are: Demographic services data, where replication is mandated by Italian law Municipal employee data, for salary calculation and career management Balance sheet data. One of the requirements set for the new solution was its affordability, as all Italian municipalities need to comply with tight budget limits. Solution Intregrated backup and replication Comune della Spezia has been using CA ARCserve Backup since 2007 to protect its data. We ran a tender and CA ARCserve Backup proved to be the only product that could match all our requirements, particularly the need to support all the operating systems we use: Windows, Linux and HP Ultrix, explains Pellitteri. Using CA ARCserve Backup, the municipality backs up three terabytes of data from 25 physical servers on a daily basis. Due to the success of using the solution, when the organisation was investigating replication solutions in 2011, it turned to CA Technologies. We contacted the Italian CA Technologies office in Milan, and the local team showed us how we could address our replication needs using CA ARCserve Replication. We also did our own comparisons with other replication products, and we came to the conclusion that the CA Technologies solution was the most suitable for our purposes, says Pellitteri. 03
CA ARCserve Replication simplifies the replication of data between servers, storage devices and locations including the cloud for both server migration purposes and disaster recovery. It delivers continuous data protection to complement backup and helps ensure that all data is quickly recoverable and available. The solution supports physical and virtual servers running Windows, Linux and UNIX, as well as data stored on various devices such as direct attached storage (DAS), network attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SANs). 1 hour recovery time for critical replicated data using CA ARCserve The replication environment has been implemented at the headquarters of the municipal police, which is remote from the main datacentre, to enable systems and data recovery in the event of a localised incident, such as flood, at the primary datacentre site. The constant presence of policemen provides additional security. Pellitteri comments, CA ARCserve Replication is effective and very easy to use. It has many useful features, for example following an incident, the solution automatically updates the primary system after normal service is resumed. The current implementation of CA ARCserve Replication requires manual intervention for switching to the replication server. In the event of an incident, service can be resumed in approximately one hour. The flexibility of the solution enables opportunities for future improvements. With the help of CA Technologies, we are planning to move from the current implementation to a high availability configuration which will provide automatic switchover to the replication server in case of disaster. We are also planning to speed up data recovery by switching from tape to disk-based backup, comments Pellitteri. 04
Benefit Better protection for critical data and services The new data protection solution based on CA ARCserve Replication has proved to be a perfect fit for the needs of the municipality of La Spezia. We now have a solution in place that allows us to replicate all the three types of critical data, and meets our targets in terms of maximum downtime in the event of an incident. The solution also fits our budget, comments Pellitteri. By using CA ARCserve Replication, the municipality of La Spezia is now able to: Protect critical data in a cost-effective manner Ensure service continuity and simplify compliance Flex recovery management services in line with changing needs. We can ensure critical data is highly available to safeguard the continuity of public services. Giorgio Pellitteri Director of IT Services, Municipality of La Spezia We are very satisfied with our relationship with CA Technologies. We appreciate the quality of the products, the technical competence of the experts who came to help us, and the quality of the support. Particularly important to us is that help from the experts from CA Technologies has enabled our IT staff to operate autonomously for most backup and replication activities, concludes Pellitteri. By using the CA Technologies solutions, we can ensure critical data is highly available to safeguard the continuity of public services. 05
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