Case Study: Cover-All Computer Services Corp.
Cover-All
Computer Services Corp.
uses a number of OpenTech Systems’ tools and services to offer better disaster-recovery
solutions to its hosted clients
In Short
Company: Cover-All Computer Services Corp.
Industry: Managed IT and hosting services
Challenge: Offering comprehensive backup and disaster-recovery solutions for its customers
Solution: Deploying OpenTech’s DASD Backup Supervisor (DBS), Virtual Data Recovery (VDR) and CopyCrypt to meet the varying needs of its customers
OpenTech: Solution Provider and Partner
Data backups are critical for any business, including those using third-party hosting services. Those organizations should be particularly mindful of how their data is being handled at offsite locations. After all, if the hosting company suffers a
meltdown, they might too, with their data being either irretrievably lost or unavailable during the re-creation process.
One third-party hosting company that’s taking no chances with its customers’ data is the Markham, Ontario, Canada-based Cover-All Computer Services Corp. Not only does the company fully administer hosted systems and applications and lease
out space for co-located servers, but also ensures that if a disaster were to occur, it will be able to bring its customers’ data back online in short order.
It does so using a number of OpenTech Systems’ data-handling tools, including DASD Backup Supervisor (DBS), Virtual Data Recovery (VDR) and CopyCrypt. “Thanks to these products,” says Dennis Hammerton, manager, System z Software Services with Cover-All, “we’re able to offer a comprehensive DR solution and our customers are very confident in their backup and recovery procedures.”
Better Control
Most of Cover-All’s clients are small to medium-sized businesses that may not have the resources or the desire to manage their own systems. As a result, they’ve decided to use Cover-All’s comprehensive outsourcing services, which include both fully managed System z-based administration or System z-based co-location support. (The company hosts other platforms as well, including Intel-based and midrange systems.)
In the former case, according to Hammerton, “We’ll provide hardware resources, and then handle the installation, maintenance and upgrades to their software, including the operating system. Our co-location services typically involve a customer leasing floor space for their own servers, which they then remotely maintain.”
In both situations, Cover-All’s customers depend on the company to ensure around-the-clock business continuity. This involves scheduled backups, with data volumes, whether on tape or virtualized, going offsite for disaster-recovery purposes. To better accommodate its customers’ needs, Cover-All recently upgraded its tape-backup environment, using higher-volume cartridges to place more data on a single tape.
As Hammerton explains, “If the data volume goes to more than one tape, then we may have to use more than one tape drive for a restore. This would significantly impede our and our customers’ ability to get back online in an acceptable timeframe. With more data on fewer tapes, however, we can control the restores much better when dealing with the DR site.”
But these beefier cartridges created their own problems, including underutilization. Wanting to address this particular issue, Cover-All began searching for a solution that would help it make better use of its high-volume cartridges. After a quick look at the marketplace, the company decided in 2007 to go with OpenTech’s DBS. “This tool allows us to stack the full volume backup across the
number of tapes for which we have tape drives at the DR site,” Hammerton says. “This means we can minimize the time needed to recover our mainframe systems.”
For Cover-All clients who choose to backup their virtual tape environment (“There are three of them that have chosen this method, whether for full or partial backups,” Hammerton remarks), the company decided to go with OpenTech’s VDR. This solution allows Cover-All to keep track of which data went to which tape. If data is deleted from tape as part of the normal backup process, VDR will note that and populate that tape with new data depending on how much space is available. As with DBS, this, as Hammerton notes, “significantly reduces the number of tapes that have to be ready at the DR site.”
In both cases, whether Cover-All clients are using physical tape or virtual tape libraries for backup purposes, OpenTech’s CopyCrypt is employed to ensure data security. When physical tape is used, encryption is applied as data is being written to it. In the virtualized environment, the data is encrypted prior to being electronically disseminated to the virtual tape environment.
Although this comes in handy in both situations, especially given new guidelines regulating the encryption of data, in particular when data’s on the move, Hammerton points out that “it’s probably easier to steal data on virtual tapes, although even physically transported tapes are vulnerable to theft. Of course, it depends on what our customers want, so some data we encrypt and some we don’t.”
A Valuable Ally
Most companies already know they need to cover their bases when it comes to disaster recovery, but they may not know which solution best fits their situation. Cover-All represents a great example of how different solutions can be used in different cases, depending on user needs and backup requirements.
For its part, Cover-All found a valuable ally in OpenTech, whether its clients want to use physical or virtualized tape storage, or if they want to encrypt their data. By deploying these solutions, including DBS, VDR and CopyCrypt, as cornerstone components, Cover-All has created a value-added service for its customers.
Some of this has to do with how easy the OpenTech solutions were to implement. Only three months elapsed between the time Cover-All decided to go with OpenTech, installed and tested the solutions, and then subsequently went live. “We were able to meet a key customer’s deadline, and they were extremely happy with the DR capabilities we could provide,” Hammerton recalls.
He’s also quick to point out that OpenTech is more than just a solution provider that drops off a package and then walks away. In fact, he highlights his relationship with his OpenTech account representative, saying, “He’s helped me quite a bit landing potential clients by putting together DR proposals that closely align with our core business.”