How Melbourne's Perfekt provides backup and DR

We speak with technical director Abie Gelbart.

Who are your backup and disaster recovery vendors?

For backup, Perfekt works predominantly with CommVault, Veritas and Veeam, but has provided solutions from other vendors where they suit specific requirements. The majority of the disaster recovery solutions Perfekt have deployed are based around storage replication with companies like Hitachi Data Systems, EMC and NetApp. 

When did your company first get involved in this area?

Perfekt was originally founded on our expertise in storage, backup and DR. We have been providing enterprise data management and protection solutions to Australian organisations since 2002.

What are your credentials in this area?

Perfekt has a highly experienced team of engineering staff that has been through formal training provided by all of the relevant vendors. The company ensures all engineers that are trained in vendor technologies take the exams required to achieve the relevant vendor certifications.

Who are your main distributors?

Avnet, Ingram, Dicker Data and Synnex.

Heard about any cool developments recently?

The disaster recovery space has not changed much over the last 25 or so years, ever since storage based remote replication was introduced in the 1990s.The same applies to backup with most customers still operating with tapes that need to be moved offsite to ensure safe long term storage of point in time data. The interesting change in the backup market now comes from a change in the cost models that make backup to disk more affordable and the eradication of tape (in many cases) a reality. 

Can you tell us about a recent deployment you have done?

Perfekt is in the process of completing an enterprise solution to deliver a high availability outcome for a leading private healthcare organisation. Our solution provides a global-active platform for the customer to ensure continuous operations of its critical applications at its primary site. The solution is underpinned by synchronous data replication across SAN storage arrays in redundant computer rooms. Data is also mirrored asynchronously to a disaster recovery site 70kms away, which provides the disaster recovery capabilities required to meet the customer’s business continuity strategy.

What’s driving customers’ backup and DR projects?

Compliance is a key driver. Customers are forced to comply with government and financial regulations that make them liable if they cannot produce data or if they lose data. There is obviously the direct risk to the business if IT systems and/or data is not available for a period of time and this is also a major internal driver for disaster recovery. 

Backup and disaster recovery is...?

An absolute requirement for all businesses that rely on IT systems and data/information to operate.