June 2008 — News
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Case Study: Freedom Area School District's Virtualized Back-up Plan
The IT needs here at the Freedom Area School District just north of Pittsburgh, PA, are always shifting and growing. One thing that remains constant, however, is the need to back up our systems quickly, safely, and securely in the event of a mishap. More important, however, is the ability to restore that backup when and where we need it, regardless of the hardware we have at hand.
We needed a backup strategy that could handle nine Windows 2003-based servers along with a mix of 1,200 desktop and laptop computers used by students in a high school, middle school, and two elementary schools. As technology coordinator with only one other part-time staffer, my focus was to find a reliable, turnkey solution to the backup conundrum that worked right out of the box that would save us money and time.
We were using a digital audio tape (DAT) drive from Seagate Technology that had been in place for eight months. The product could load tapes automatically and allowed us to set up a backup schedule that executed without supervision.
But tape makes me nervous. I have heard enough horror stories from friends in the industry about the quality of tapes degrading, getting corrupted, or when they did a restore found that not all the information they needed was on it. With each of the nine servers dedicated to a different application holding local and critical data, including the Library System and Health Master for the nurses, we couldn't afford any lengthy down time.
Another issue with tape was time. The district needed an alternative that could be back up and running in minutes, not hours or days, and the administrative processes associated with tape were just tacks in the road.
The Search
With a list of priorities firmly in hand, we searched for a backup and disaster recovery software package with the necessary features and that could handle the mix of servers and desktop systems we had.
We considered several candidates, but some were too complex or expensive. And because our nine rack-mounted servers are from Dell Computer Systems, along with most of the PCs, we checked their Web site looking at a range of tape solutions. A network-attached storage (NAS) drive was technically possible, but the cost was prohibitive. We wound up settling on Acronis True Image Enterprise Server, an imaging backup solution. Through our own hands-on evaluation, as well as in talking to other technicians, the Acronis product seemed to be a good fit. For example, it didn't require adding extra drivers for different types of network cards. It also had a familiar Windows XP-like interface.
Another requirement we had was to keep the image size down so we could store images on either NAS devices, CDs or DVDs. We also needed the ability to manipulate the images, including mounting them as drive letters under "My Computers" in Windows.
