National Distribution Alliance Enhances Data Protection with Assure MIMIX DR for AIX
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Assure MIMIX DR for AIX
- IBM AIX
- IBM Power 720 Express server
Tech Stack
- Assure MIMIX DR for AIX
- IBM AIX
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Customer Satisfaction
- Digital Expertise
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage
Applicable Industries
- Professional Service
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
National Distribution Alliance (NDA) is a company that represents hundreds of local, national, and international publishers. It is responsible for delivering time-sensitive periodicals to 10,000 retailers in the New York Metro area on a daily basis. Operating 365 days a year, NDA is a dynamic business that relies heavily on data and application availability to ensure smooth operations. With a workforce of 100 employees, the company is tasked with the critical mission of ensuring that periodicals reach their destinations on time, every day. Given the nature of its business, NDA requires a robust disaster recovery solution to protect its data and ensure business continuity. The company previously relied on tape-based backups, which proved to be inadequate due to slow recovery times and the risk of data loss. NDA's need for a more efficient and reliable disaster recovery solution led them to seek alternatives that would minimize human error and provide faster data recovery.
The Challenge
At one time, NDA protected its data by backing it up to tape nightly. However, that was inadequate because recoveries were too slow and once-a-day backups left too much data vulnerable to loss. One of the problems with nightly tape-based backups is the nightly part. Data entered or updated during the current day is not yet on any backup tape. Consequently, up to a day’s worth of data is always at risk—and more if the most recent tape is unavailable or corrupted. Another problem with nightly tape-based backups is the tape part. To perform a recovery, the backup tape has to be retrieved, possibly from an offsite location, it has to be mounted onto a drive and the necessary data have to be extracted and loaded unto the production server. In the event of a disaster, it might also be necessary to first acquire and configure a new server. In all, recovery can take hours or even a few days. For a dynamic business like NDA, that’s far too long. In addition, tape backups and recoveries involve many manual processes to locate, transport and mount tapes and run the necessary jobs. And, humans are fallible and, consequently, manual processes create opportunities for error. NDA recognized that it needed a disaster recovery solution that protects all of its data, allows data to be recovered almost immediately and minimizes the chance of human error.
The Solution
NDA now has a disaster recovery solution that is far more robust than was possible with tape-based alternatives. NDA uses Assure MIMIX DR for AIX to protect the AIX environment it uses to run its business. Assure MIMIX DR for AIX monitors a production server for changes and immediately replicates them to a second server that can quickly assume the production role if the primary server becomes unavailable due to a storage or server failure, human error, a disaster or any other cause. Assure MIMIX DR for AIX replicates only changes to production data, and can optionally utilize compression with its WAN-optimized data transmission. Consequently, its bandwidth requirements are low, making replication practical whether you are replicating data within a building or to the other side of the world. The automation provided by Assure MIMIX DR for AIX also eliminates most of the manual processes required for tape-based backup and recovery. In addition to providing labor savings, this improves the accuracy of the processes as it automates the disaster recovery runbook, thereby saving time, ensuring best practices and eliminating human error. Furthermore, because Assure MIMIX DR replicates data in real-time, it can support aggressive Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs). Whereas nightly tape backups can leave considerable recent data unprotected, Assure MIMIX DR leaves virtually no data exposed. Online recovery is, obviously, also much faster than tape-based recovery. Whereas recovering from tape can take hours or even days, Assure MIMIX DR for AIX allows NDA to recover data within minutes if a disaster were to occur. In addition, Assure MIMIX DR provides true Continuous Data Protection (CDP), which allows NDA to recover data not just up to a moment of failure, but also to any point in time. John Baudille, VP of Technology and Information Services, considers this to be a valuable feature, particularly if an application problem were to corrupt data. With CDP, NDA can recover data to
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