Process improvement to boost backup efficiency

Client

The client is a global IT services provider working with public and private sector organizations managing their mission-critical business processes and the underlying IT systems. An FTSE 250 company, the client employs 50,000 people across the globe.

Business Goal

The client had different, complex and inefficient data backup environments for each business. Each backup and restoration cycle required customized processes resulting in low throughput, large data loads and high memory reads. The backup jobs were running into business hours causing a slowdown or complete suspension of servers with users being unable to access critical applications required for daily activities.

The cascading effect of the backup environment posed a threat to revenue and to compliance requirements. The client need to resolve this by improving backup processes and storage capabilities.

Microland Solution

After assessing the client’s diverse backup environments, Microland first identified non-critical servers and rescheduled backup jobs thereby reducing the load on VMware vCenter as well as the time taken for backups. We then identified unmodifiable static data from modifiable data to reduce the size of backup jobs. This resulted in the effective utilization of storage/disk space.

Backups from application servers using different technologies platforms (Veeam and IBM TSM) were brought under a single umbrella (CDI Commvault) to maximize utilization of existing resources. This was accompanied by the following key enhancements:

• Virtual disk transfer methods such as switching from NBD (network block device) transport mode to SAN (storage area network) mode were configured to increase throughput
• Points of overlap were identified and backup jobs running on different technologies were rescheduled to optimize usage of servers and storage
• Multi streaming for backup of file and HSM (hardware security module) servers was enabled, Disaster Recovery (DR) features were configured to create redundancy and reduce the time required for data restoration

Business Outcomes:

The steps taken by Microland helped the client centralize backup processes and improve archiving policies. The business benefits included: 

• 80 % reduction in time taken for backup and restore, making critical applications available to users and meeting compliance requirements
• Increased data archiving from 28 days to 365 days
• Improved throughput
• Reduced latency

The client is a global IT services provider working with public and private sector organizations managing their mission-critical business processes and the underlying IT systems. An FTSE 250 company, the client employs 50,000 people across the globe.

The client had different, complex and inefficient data backup environments for each business. Each backup and restoration cycle required customized processes resulting in low throughput, large data loads and high memory reads. The backup jobs were running into business hours causing a slowdown or complete suspension of servers with users being unable to access critical applications required for daily activities.

The cascading effect of the backup environment posed a threat to revenue and to compliance requirements. The client need to resolve this by improving backup processes and storage capabilities.

After assessing the client’s diverse backup environments, Microland first identified non-critical servers and rescheduled backup jobs thereby reducing the load on VMware vCenter as well as the time taken for backups. We then identified unmodifiable static data from modifiable data to reduce the size of backup jobs. This resulted in the effective utilization of storage/disk space.

Backups from application servers using different technologies platforms (Veeam and IBM TSM) were brought under a single umbrella (CDI Commvault) to maximize utilization of existing resources. This was accompanied by the following key enhancements:

• Virtual disk transfer methods such as switching from NBD (network block device) transport mode to SAN (storage area network) mode were configured to increase throughput
• Points of overlap were identified and backup jobs running on different technologies were rescheduled to optimize usage of servers and storage
• Multi streaming for backup of file and HSM (hardware security module) servers was enabled, Disaster Recovery (DR) features were configured to create redundancy and reduce the time required for data restoration

The steps taken by Microland helped the client centralize backup processes and improve archiving policies. The business benefits included: 

• 80 % reduction in time taken for backup and restore, making critical applications available to users and meeting compliance requirements
• Increased data archiving from 28 days to 365 days
• Improved throughput
• Reduced latency