Redstor's New General Manager

I am delighted to announce that Chris Sigley has been appointed as the General Manager of Redstor with full profit and loss responsibilities.

Chris has been successfully heading up the Redstor Education Business Unit which has grown significantly in the last 4 years. This unit now has over 70 Local Authority and Service Partners as customers built initially around Redstor’s Backup Service for Schools (RBUSS) which backs up over 12,000 schools in the UK. Chris was also behind the introduction of Centrastage a device management software which enables Local Authorities to do Asset Management, Power Management, Software Distribution and Remote Support from one web console to their schools.

Chris originally joined the company in September 2004 and has progressed rapidly from being a new business executive, to Education Head to General Manager.

Since Redstor was founded in 1998 by Tony Ruane and myself it has been focused in the area of Data Management and Protection and over the years we have built up a solid and loyal customer base with many recurring relationships and today over 60% of Redstor's income is repeatable which gives us a springboard for continued growth.

Chris's challenge is to continue to renew and grow our customer relationships which we value through excellent customer service and delivering innovative solutions in line with Redstor's heritage.

Paul Evans, MD

Redstor on hand to empower a large UK energy organisation

We have recently successfully completed a long term consultancy project at a large organisation operating in the UK energy market. Redstor were employed to join the customers Storage Team and to develop and document its ‘storage strategy’, including the strategic objective, long-term vision and roadmap, a strategy that would be followed through this year and next and would re-shape the storage environment and provide a stable platform from which to support the business.

The large, multi-vendor, heterogeneous infrastructure had grown up largely in support of point solutions, specific project, departmental or inter-company initiatives and consisted of in excess of a thousand servers, two large isolated Storage Area Networks hosting multiple storage systems, a mix of backup and recovery applications and tape libraries with differing tape technologies. With approximately 240Tb's worth of data, the environment was difficult to manage, it was managed in ‘silos’, spread across several support teams with no common processes or tools. The aim was to create a consolidated environment that was scalable and could realise efficiencies through economies of scale, eliminating redundant hardware and software costs and streamlining administrative effort.

Redstor were able to call upon a variety of technology partners, reinforcing our stance of having a best-of-breed and independent approach. Some of these partners included Symantec, IBM, HP, NetApp, SUN and Brocade.

Considering the history of the current infrastructure, the limitations of the existing designs and the requirements for further growth, the strategy was split into four themes consisting of consolidated backup and recovery, disk storage consolidation, consolidation of file services and the development of the existing Storage Area Networks. The process of developing the strategy involved the customer outlining a direction that we challenged and shaped, using our many years of experience working with thousands of organizations, large and small, in different markets and using our understanding of technology, what works, what doesn’t and through a series of interactive, face-to-face sessions.

The consultancy was completed on time and has resulted in a well received, documented strategy, a ‘blueprint’, that articulates and controls what the future enterprise storage infrastructure environment will look like and will aid transition planning from the current ‘as-is’ environment to the new ‘to-be’ environment.

Redstor backup service for schools through to the final judging phase for the BETT Awards 2010!

Redstor's successful online backup service for schools (RBUSS) has made it through to the final judging phase for the BETT Awards 2010. The service successfully passed and completed the technical evaluation phase, meeting the BETT Awards technical criteria.
The service is entered in the 'Leadership & Management Solutions' category.

The finalists for the BETT Awards 2010 will be published on the BETT Awards website on the 12th November 2009 so everything is crossed that Redstor make this shortlist of nominees.
The BETT Awards partners consider high technical standards to be critical components of educational products and services. External moderators have guided the technical evaluation of the solution.

Redstor's online backup service is used by over 75 Local Authorities and service providers in the Education Sector throughout the United Kingdom addressing the backups of over 12,000 schools.
The software that powers the service is Capita’s approved backup technology for SIMS, however it also protects every other MIS application in use amongst UK schools. RBUSS is protecting school data across a broad mix of Local Authorities in the UK, regardless of size, demographics, location, numbers of school and size of school.
Admin and Curriculum bundles are available in differing Gb sized accounts.
www.redstor.com/backupforschools.html

Redstor Online Backup Grows - over a billion files protected!

Further to the post back on the 9th September, Redstor's online backup service (Redstor Online Backup) has now reached the magical 1 billion files protected mark!

This is a great achievement where we have seen the service grow successfully year on year.

The service is powered by an enterprise class infrastructure based across 2 datacentres. The infrastructure consists of 3 major components:

1. Server
2. Storage
3. Network

The server infrastructure consists of three two-node clusters running VMware ESX 3.5. There are two clusters at Bracknell and one at Egham. All hardware is HP Proliant DL. The VMware software components include VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduling and High Availability features. These products allow us to provide a redundant server environment for the application. Virtual Machines can be migrated between servers to ensure optimal use of resources and prevent downtime in the event of failure.

The storage component is based on Fibre Channel (FC) Storage Area Networks (SANs) at each location that connect the servers to EMC CLARiiON disk arrays. Each server has multiple connections into the SAN and therefore multiple paths to the CLARiiON storage. The disk sub-system at each site uses tiered storage with FC disks allocated to VM Operating System disks and SATA disks allocated to VM data disks. The data disks are configured as Raw Device Mappings (RDMs).

The service is used by over 70 Local Authorities and education service providers, as well as many integrators and Managed Service Providers who rebrand the service as their own.
http://www.redstor.com/onlinebackup.html

Redstor help Generali International with deduplication protection

Find out how Redstor helped Generali International with EMC Data Domain's deduplication technology by visiting http://www.snseurope.com/snslink/news/news-readfull.php?newsid=13232

Redstor were involved in discussions from the start with Generali. Although they had been utilising general disk-to-disk backup for over five years to protect up to a year's worth of data, when the financial services organisation implemented a virtualised server environment demands on its storage resources increased considerably. Generali could no longer protect even three months of backups on its existing disk-to-disk backup and the IT team was forced to reallocate a large amount of its primary storage – a costly solution for extended retention of backup data.

With the help of Redstor and our consultative approach, Generali moved ahead quickly with a deduplication solution from EMC Data Domain.
Following the guidance from Redstor, the organisation has already experienced considerable cost and administration time savings. It has recaptured SAN storage space, and the team now spends 50% less time managing its virtual infrastructure. Backups are now a lot faster, significantly reducing the backup window. Network-efficient replication of virtual servers to the DR site has minimal impact on the organisation's network bandwidth, and was implemented without having to budget for a larger WAN link.

‘Working with the Public Sector to Save Time, Money and Enhance Service with Backup and Device Management Solutions’

Paul Evans - Founder and MD of Redstor

During the last 3 party conferences we have heard much talk about how each political party is proposing to deliver cost reductions in the public sector whilst still seeming to want to preserve and enhance front line services.

This has always been the dilemma at the heart of all decision making in government and one which will be more acute in these new austere times.

There have been various government initiatives looking to achieve efficiencies in the delivery of services, notably the Gershon Review of Public Sector Efficiency which was published in July 2004. The Objective of the Review was focused on the government objective of ‘releasing major resources out of activities which could be undertaken more efficiently into front line services that meet the public’s highest priorities’. In short, how can government drive efficiency savings across public sector expenditure?

The main ways Local Authorities seem to be addressing Gershon targets are through budget savings, streamlining business processes, reducing headcount and a combination of IT and shared services.

At Redstor, over the last 4 and half years we have been successfully partnering with Local Authorities to address these very issues by helping them deliver enhanced cost effective services through innovative solutions delivering real value to the UK tax payer.

For instance Redstor’s Remote Backup Service For Schools (RBUSS) is a ‘shared service’ which is now used by over 70 Local Authorities and approximately 12,000 schools in England and Wales.

This service has raised service levels to the schools by increasing the security and availability of schools data. Lost files and information can now be recovered by the schools or Local Authority instantly at a click of a button without having to find the correct tape. School administrators no longer have to manage inefficient tape backup regimes and worry about having to take tapes offsite for disaster recovery purposes.

From the local authority point of view with RBUSS, ICT teams are fielding in some instances up to 30% less support calls in relation to backups with the consequent saving of time and money.

In one authority, one administrator is able to spend just 30 minutes a day managing the backups of 600 schools. This means that team members can be freed up from mundane tasks to focus on other priorities.

Local Authorities are saving money by leveraging the economies of scale delivered by the Redstor backup platform without losing actual control of the delivery of the backup service.

Using the Redstor Backup Platform, Local Authorities can offer a backup service to schools which is cheaper than the cost of a traditional tape based solution and which is cheaper than the cost of trying to build, manage and maintain their own platform.

Finally, the pooling of knowledge and best practice through Local Authority participation in the Redstor forums acts as a catalyst to challenge the participants to offer new services in an efficient and simple way.

Centrastage is another solution Redstor has brought to the public sector market which very much facilitates and underpins cost effective service delivery.

Centrastage is a software platform which provides device management enabling senior managers from the CEO and FD to the ICT service delivery arm to have visibility and control of the ICT estate thereby enabling efficient management.

• It facilitates the streamlining of Business and IT processes through the automation of mundane IT tasks such as patch management
• One person can manage thousands of PC's and servers by exception thereby freeing up front line headcount to concentrate on core activities
• It ensures improved availability and longevity of IT assets through consistent monitoring and proactive housekeeping
• Through its asset management capability, money can be saved by better software licence management
• It puts the public sector back in control with software vendors as software can be uninstalled and new vendor software deployed across thousands of devices at the touch of a button
• It can be run as a 'shared service' and hosted either within Government or in the 'cloud'
• Through the CentraStage user forum, Authorities are collaborating and sharing their ideas and ways of working to ensure they offer more efficient as well as new and better ICT services
• Being a customer driven shared service and benefiting from feedback in the forums, CentraStage can apply this pooled knowledge to drive down the cost of the solution and make managing every device affordable to the public sector

A demonstration of how Centrastage can save time and money can be seen in the forthcoming SQL2005 to SQL2008 upgrade which Local Authorities must carry out in many schools.

Using Centrastage, authorities have shown they can save 2-2.5 hours per primary school of administrator’s time in the upgrade process.

Assuming 90% of the 22,000 UK Primary Schools need to do the upgrade this would equate to a massive potential 49,500 hours of time saved equivalent to 27 administrators working full time for a year at a total cost of £648,000.*

This is just one tiny example of how using Centrastage can achieve Gershon objectives quickly at little cost and can help the public sector achieve on Business Transformation projects.

I will be talking more in my next blog about how Centrastage and the RBUSS service can help the public sector achieve the ‘Greening of Government ICT’ and its SOGE Targets (current Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate).

*This has assumed a 35 hour week and an average salary of £20,000 per annum plus an additional 20% levy in relation to national insurance contributions and other employment costs such as space, expenses and IT etc.

Redstor Implement First CommVault Solution at Major Oil and Gas Company in Aberdeen

Redstor helped an international oil and gas services company headquartered in Aberdeen UK with a CommVault implementation. The company is one of the world’s leading drilling and engineering contractors with some 8000 personnel and a presence in over 20 countries.

Redstor were engaged to provide recommendations for a new backup solution based on the company’s specific requirements. This process consisted of several stages: an initial analysis of their current set-up; an on-going dialogue with their IT administrators; a consideration of suitable products available in the market place and finally a recommendation.

The ageing backup infrastructure was based on EMC Networker software and an ADIC Scalar 100 tape library that is now unable to meet the demands of a changed and expanded server and storage environment. Hardware and software elements are five years old and causing difficulties through mechanical failure and a lack of functionality. This has led to backup windows stretching to unmanageable lengths, job failures and ultimately unprotected data.

A technology refresh was required to address these issues. Software product replacement offered additional functionality that would improve backup efficiency. Introducing backup-to-disk provided support for server virtualisation and a faster, more reliable, restore capability. A new tape library and drives would provide higher throughput and capacity for a smaller footprint.

Why CommVault?


The CommVault product offers protection for all the major requirements: Lotus Notes, Windows File Systems, VMware and Active Directory.

The CommVault product offers integrated de-duplication to eliminate redundant data before it is transmitted to backup targets. As the de-duplication is embedded it is more aware of data content and therefore more efficient in processing data blocks. The oil and gas company is also at liberty to use its own choice of disk sub-system as a de-duplication target rather than an additional turn-key appliance as a hardware solution would necessitate.

The CommVault iDataAgent includes support for auxiliary copies of backups from disk-to-disk or disk-to-tape. It is therefore possible to replicate de-duplicated data backups between heterogeneous disk systems without additional cost.

The CommVault Universal Virtual Server Agent provides additional functionality for VMware environments beyond its competitors. For example, volume and incremental image level backup. The latter in particular allows for space efficient image backups from which file, volume or full image level restores are all possible. A VM discovery feature enables newly created VMs to be identified and captured in a backup automatically through a default policy. Virtual to Physical restores are also possible from an image backup thanks to embedded support for VMConverter.

The CommVault GridStor feature allows for load balancing and failover between MediaAgents ensuring that backups will continue even in the event of a MediaAgent fault.

Additional software options like the Data Classification Enabler can enhance and improve scan capabilities on Windows File systems, eliminating much of the overhead of processing large numbers of folders and files and reducing backup times.

CommVault Simpana is a Windows-centric product. It was developed in close co-operation with Microsoft and consequently the CommServe component is Windows only. Most alternatives, including Networker, originated in the mainframe and UNIX space and were “adapted” for Windows.

CommVault Simpana is much more than a backup and recovery product. The same core, or Common Technology Engine, drives additional features such as Archiving, Data Replication and Storage Resource Management. These can all be added at a later stage to create a powerful storage management suite. For example, Archiving could be added for the file servers eliminating “stale” data from these servers that would also be de-duplicated onto disk. In turn this would reduce backup requirements on the servers themselves.

CommVault Simpana has been identified by the Gartner Group as one of only two vendors in a positive position in the Enterprise Backup/Recovery software market in their 2008 MarketScope evaluation. Where it was commended for its “strong support for VMware backup” and “aggressive road map of planned capabilities”.

Over 100 service providers offering Redstor's successful online backup service!

Over 100 service providers are now offering our hugely successful online backup service. Consisting of both education and commercial service providers, the service is proving to be a real hit.
With nearly half of the state schools in England and Wales using or having access to the service, the importance of data protection and management has never been greater.
To learn how to grab a part of Redstor's online backup service, please call us on 01189 515 200.