ComputerWorld

December 1, 2005

By Kenneth Liew

Tyco improves server backup regime

Having used a file-based backup product to replicate data on its servers for the past three years, Tyco Electronics Singapore felt there was room for improvement in its server backup regime.

Having used a file-based backup product to replicate data on its servers for the past three years, Tyco Electronics Singapore felt there was room for improvement in its server backup regime. While the backup product had been functioning adequately, the process required that each server be taken down for 30–45 minutes on average to complete the task, with users unable to perform any productive work during that time. Also, a significant number of man-hours was spent scheduling downtime, notifying users, and other related tasks.

In addition, if a server was to go down unexpectedly, more than half a day would be needed to achieve complete restoration, with much of the time spent on reconfiguring hardware, loading system and application software, reinstalling data and other tasks. Even then, the data from the time of the last backup to when the failure occurred would have been lost.

Tyco, a manufacturer of electronic components, has about 10 servers running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows Server 2000 to support its plant operations and back-office functions. Its Information Systems Department came up with a wish list of features in its new backup-and-restore system which included automated scheduling of server imaging, online imaging of server disks, to-the-minute disk images and fast restoration of downed servers.

Tyco piloted Acronis True Image 8.0 Enterprise Server for Windows on two of its mission-critical servers in May 2005.

"The wizard-driven implementation process was very straightforward. Day-to-day use is very easy too, thanks to the user-friendly graphical interface. There was no need for retraining," said George Wee, systems administrator, Information Systems Department.

The implementation couldn't have come at a better time — a few days after the software was installed, one of the servers with Acronis True Image 8.0 Enterprise Server for Windows crashed due to hard disk failure.

According to Wee, Tyco managed to achieve full restoration in less than 20 minutes, compared with the half-day or more that would have been needed previously. "And just as important, we were able to go back to the last known usable state without losing the day's work," he added.

Tyco now performs a full backup of the hard disks in the Acronis-equipped mission-critical servers.

"Other than the ability to create snapshot server disk images online and do set once and forget scheduling, what we found most compelling about Acronis was the ease of being able to go back to the last known usable state without-having to do a laborious bare-bones boot up," said Wee. Another feature that impressed was the Acronis Secure Zone, a hidden partition on the local hard disk that is used to store disk and partition images, thus eliminating the need for dedicated disk backup storage. The ability to plug disk images as virtual drives offers the choice of retrieving particular files or folders, is another key feature that further reduces restoration time.

According to Wee, the company is streamlining its backup processes and will most likely do incremental backups and more frequent full backups.

"With the solutions in place, we have significantly reduced scheduled downtime and gained a higher level of assurance in the data backup area. The high degree of automation afforded by the solutions has also enabled our IT staff and their end-user colleagues to become more productive," he added.

The Information Systems Department is planning to extend the backup and recovery capabilities to more servers and critical workstations, and is also looking at how to incorporate the disk images created using the Acronis software into the company's disaster recovery plans.

Tyco is at tycoelectronics.com and Acronis is at www.acronis.com.sg.