Like a lot of organisations, rapid growth and the need to move to new premises sparked an overhaul of this event management company’s IT infrastructure, including storage.
Moving Venue Management (MVM) began in Sydney 10 years ago with one employee, but in recent months it outgrew its office and moved all 15 employees to a new location twice the size.
Meryl Whetton, MVM’s general manager, says they took the opportunity to update equipment and the company’s e-commerce capabilities at the same time.
"We moved offices between Christmas [2004] and New Year and allowed ourselves three days to do all the new installations. We had all new computers, with heaps of new software and upgrades. It was basically done in one day," she says.
MVM has two large servers. One server is dedicated to online registrations for conferencing, and they often have up to five conferences registering concurrently.
"We have to store registration details and flight and accommodation preferences, process online payments, work with travel agents, and organise tours and accommodation both locally and overseas," Whetton says.
A lot of the company’s storage is taken up with emails, and Whetton says because of the type of information being stored, MVM had to do a major overhaul of its backup systems to ensure data is stored accurately and remains secure.
Whetton says she chose Computer Information Agency (CIA) as her IT provider because she had previously worked with that company’s principal, Robert Crane. "Basically, he looks after all our IT needs. If I have a problem, he comes up with a couple of solutions and we talk it over as to which way to go," she says.
Crane’s company, CIA, is a Computer Associates reseller based in Sydney. When asked to sort out MVM’s storage, one of Crane’s primary objectives was to keep storage as simple as possible.
| A SIMPLE STORAGE SOLUTION FOR MVM |
| The problem |
|
He says the simplest solution was a single tape unit that could hold the total capacity of the data that the client needed to be backed up. Basically one cartridge for all their data because SMBs do not want to worry about complexity. They want to put one tape in and take one tape out and to know they have all their data backed up in one single location; nice and simple.
"MVM had a previous version of [CA’s] ARCserve and we upgraded to the latest version of BrightStor. They were basically incorporating an e-commerce solution to handle their event management online and their storage needs were growing dramatically," he says.
Crane says he is seeing phenomenal growth in email data in all his SMBs. Instead of the information being stored in a file system, it is now locked up in an exchange database. "So if the exchange database has a problem or fails, the customer may not be able to access up to 16GB worth of information that they’ve got stored in their mail server."
He says too many SMBs are too casual about their data and just do not realise that if they lose their data and cannot restore it, they can potentially go out of business.
"They don’t appreciate backups and disaster recovery. They can replace their people, their machines, their operating system, basically everything else, but if they lose that information off their server and it’s not backed up, then they’re going to struggle," he cautions.
The fix
| The solution |
|
CIA monitors and reports to MVM on a weekly basis on the status of their storage systems and the success of their backups.
Another thing Crane did was identify some potential risks in data management practices. MVM used to have one single backup that backed up both its servers, but now each server is backed up separately and independently, which is a safer way to go.
"It also makes it a lot easier to restore and to get files back, which we have to do from time to time," Whetton says.
Crane says when he first upgraded MVM, the company had a DDS3 solution that was adequate on the old server but when it was installed on the new server it became inadequate and they were running over two tapes.
"We then put forward some options -- whether to go to DDS5 or go up to a high-end LTO solution," Crane says. "We sat down with them and outlined the costs involved and their expected data growth. They took the decision to go to DDS5 as an intermediary step before going to LTO because LTO was just too expensive in the current budget year that they had."
By doing all online registrations MVM has actually saved money. "Prior to this we’ve done it all by fax," Whetton says. And that could get messy with up to 500 delegates registering for one conference alone, with each registration and change of detail involving faxes back and forth."All those fax forms had to then be manually entered. Previously if we had a few conferences on at the same time, we’d have to put casuals on to do all the manual data entry. We don’t need them now its all online, so it does save us a lot."
Prior to the storage upgrade, MVM’s server had a capacity of about 36GB, which Crane says they were bumping up against. Now they’ve got a capacity of over 100GB, which they’re filling up as we speak, he says.
"We found BrightStor is the easiest option for the customer to understand that their backups are running correctly, that they’re able to restore data, and it’s a much simpler option than some other solutions available."
He says BrightStor also gives them the ability to back up the exchange database, so they can back up their email boxes individually. "They can also back up their SQL server when it’s running online so it doesn’t have to come down to allow the backup of that sort of data," he says.
The future
Whetton says one of the best results for her is that it frees her up to do her own job. Every week CIA gives her a report based on its monitoring of MVM’s storage systems, including a server report, how they are going storage-wise, even internet usage.
"They also keep us up to date technology-wise, do all the patches, and they’ll talk to everyone in the company about any of their IT problems and sort them out. I can choose to have weekly reports or fortnightly or monthly," she says.
 |
| MVM's Whetton: Overhaul ensured data accuracy and security |
"Robert is our security blanket. If it was left to me to do the IT stuff myself, I’d be way behind the eight ball," she says. Whetton says she has not had a problem going over the IT budget so far, which is unusual for most SMBs.
"At the moment we’re looking at what we need for the future.We need a new database program and Robert is coming up with some suggestions: which ones are cost effective and do what we want it to do. When I talk to Robert about what we need, I say, 'This is our problem or these are our plans', and he comes back to us with several options. I never get told, 'This is what you’ve got to do'. I get options and choose to suit my budgets and needs."
Whetton says MVM’s parent company in London was so impressed with the Sydney operations that they came out in March to see whether they could use the same sort of system in London. "We’re way ahead of them here," she says.
Crane says one of the most valuable things integrators and IT partners can do for their customers is to educate them about storage, backup and DR, and then instil in them the awareness that they are ultimately responsible for their own data -- no-one else.
"We’ve seen small businesses that believe they’ve been changing backups regularly and when it actually comes to restore, the tapes are blank. You might laugh, but if it was your business you can imagine what that might mean. They think they’ve been doing everything right, but 15 tapes were all blank because it could be as simple as having the 'write-protect' tab on and they never checked the log."
Crane suggests each SMB needs to have at least one person responsible for storage, and to have processes in place so that if they are not there, someone else takes over.
"SMBs need to value their data like it’s gold, because otherwise they could put themselves out of business. It’s a constant message we’re trying to reinforce...but like everything else, people never think of insurance until they break a leg," Crane says.
-1.jpg&w=100&c=1&s=0)
.png&w=100&c=1&s=0)
