GoSkills - Advanced Backup Solution

The Brief

GoSkills' growth in users and IT infrastructure meant that the backup solution was not now equipped to handle the extensive demands that would be required of it in the event of a disaster.

GoSkills needed a more thorough backup solution, one that encompassed all of their systems and would be able to quickly and completely restore the data should the need arise.

The Solution

GoSkills now house several servers, each configured for unique roles. As GoSkills has become more reliant on their IT infrastructure and any loss of data or lengthy downtime would be costly. With GoSkills' business critical data and services spread over several systems a backup solution needed to be capable and well thought out.

Having worked with GoSkills from the beginning, Real Point were in a ideal position to understand the IT and business requirements and at heart what keeps GoSkills going. So the first part was to ascertain their needs and prioritise them.

With this information we could then look at what solutions were available. Of the many we looked into Symantec's Backup Exec with Continuous Protection Server (CPS) and System Recovery Exec fitted the bill best.

Backup Exec and CPS were installed on a brand new server, which Real Point made sure has enough capacity for all of GoSkills' immediate and future backup requirements. The CPS is configured to act as a mirror of the data and file server. Remote Agents have been installed for Exchange, SQL and Open File so specific and live data can be backed up. System snapshots are taken and saved to removable media, which is taken offsite.

System Recovery adds an extra bit of protection. In the event of a fire or catastrophic hardware failure, the backup can be restored to new and completely different hardware. Real Point has recently added an additional online backup solution at GoSkills' request.

The Verdict

GoSkills have taken their business continuity and disaster recovery seriously and Real Point was able to advise and deliver a solution that met their needs. The solution in place provides a comprehensive backup and a speedy recovery in any scenario.