- How Well Are You Sleeping at Night?
By Phil George, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Avamar
I am sleeping much better lately, but that’s because I recently purchased a new mattress. We all know a good night’s sleep is critical for good health and a productive mind. But, as much as I would like to believe that getting a new mattress will solve all your sleeping woes, the reality is unless you do something about your backup process, chances are good that there will be many more restless nights in your future.
Such was the case for Link Alander, associate vice chancellor of technology at Lone Star College. Alander manages IT for 6 colleges, 2 university centers and 8 instructional centers. Lone Star College is 95% virtualized with more than 900 virtual machines, serving some 100,000 users. A sure-fire recipe for insomnia if there ever were one!
Alander said “there was a time when restful sleep was as rare as snow at Christmas in Houston, but now I sleep great!” Today, he sleeps well because he knows his data is always backed up and ready for recovery. Because of client-side deduplication, in the order of 99.8%, only daily unique changed data is sent over the wire for storage, so he can leverage existing network bandwidth. Not only are his backups 100% successful (all managed from a single solution that also replicates data to the DR site nightly), but he has also dramatically improved recovery speeds to just a few minutes.
Tom Fairfield, manager of technology at Elliot Health System in New Hampshire, also knows the meaning of good sleep, thanks to being able to backup his virtualized environment in just a fraction of the time it used to take. Now, Fairfield says he just “sets it and forgets it.” Plus, quick, easy restore and the ability to test the VM before deploying in production environments, gives him further peace of mind that he will be able to restore fully and quickly.
Watch the EMC Live on-demand webcast to learn how Lone Star College and Elliot Health System moved to EMC Avamar for their next-generation backup and recovery solution. Perhaps this is your first step toward a more restful sleep.
Great write up. Backups just WORK with Avamar. Here is a release about a local customer, Drivetime (Arizona), great experience with Avamar and VMAX. http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2011/20111201-01.htm That reminds me... time to replace my mattress.
- David, December 1, 2011 at 12:17 pm