Data protection

Data protection

S2s Ltd is a UK provider of network consulting and implementation services that needed data protection to ensure business continuity, even in the event of a server breakdown.

s2s was previously using disk-to-tape to back up all the various systems the business was running on.

Backing up and recovering data was not only a very complicated and time-consuming process, it was also very unreliable. When retrieving data from the tapes, once they had been delivered back to s2s, a lot of the data from the tapes was irretrievable.

SecurStores online solution automatically transfers data offsite in real-time, eliminating the risk of having backups located onsite in case of a disaster or loss of data during transportation to an offsite location. Data is transmitted and stored offsite in a state of the art data centre on a reliable disk subsystem, which is in turn duplicated and backed up onto a second disk sub-system located apart from the primary disk sub-system.

Due to the nature of the business, s2s runs on a variety of operating systems. Most of its servers are Linux-based and some of them are Mac-based, because many s2s employees use Apple Macintosh machines. It also has the obligatory Windows applications and operates with a SAN architecture. SecurStore also needed to take into account the fact that most of the s2s servers are virtualised and that s2s already had a NAS (network-attached storage) system in place.

The backup service uses many defense mechanisms, such as strong authentication, data encryption, password protection and client and system side log legitimate users at s2s to perform a data recovery when needed.

SecurStore backs up the critical data of s2s (120GB) online on a continual basis, so that from the moment a server goes down, all the data can be quickly eiredata.com retrieved online. The remaining less critical 80GB of data is either backed up to SecurStores Backup Lifecycle Management (BLM) offline service, or backed up by the outsourced provider.

SecurStore is suitable for businesses that need to protect data from a few gigabytes to terabytes. The service ensures that any data held on PCs, Macintosh computers, file servers and application/database servers is securely backed up. SecurStore supports many platforms including Windows NT/2000/2003/XP along with AS-400 iSeries, Unix and Linux. SecurStore can also protect a wide range of databases including Oracle, SQL, Exchange, Lotus Notes and DB2.