HEIDELBERG simplifies backups with StoreOnce and HPE Data Protector - case study

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Case study
HEIDELBERG
Industry
Engineering
“Due to the large number of tapes, the IT
team was spending an immense amount of
time on administration – mainly because we
chose to store the cassettes at a separate
location on the site for security reasons,”
remembers Peter Brecht, project manager
and the person responsible for storage and
backups at the data centre. “This meant that
restores could take a considerable amount
of time, and we didn’t want our end-users
to keep on having to wait. The number of
errors in the backups was also on the rise.
Each morning, my colleagues and I would
have to first check if there had been any
interruptions to the backups overnight,
and if so, we had to restart the process
from that point.”
Due to the ever-increasing data volumes,
some backups took up to 24 hours. “This
became a real problem as by that point
the next backup would already have been
triggered,” says Brecht.
Solution
Comprehensive solution from HPE
HEIDELBERG decided to look for a new,
modern backup solution. The IT team
began by creating a concept for the new
infrastructure and defining their catalogue
of requirements. “The first thing we agreed
was that we wanted to continue using HPE
Data Protector,” says Böckler. “We went to an
event where HPE told us about the (then)
latest 8.0 version. What we learned there
convinced us that this would be the best
product to meet our needs.”
“When version 9.0 was released shortly
afterwards, there was no doubt in our minds
- we were ready to move over.”
But the question of which hardware to use
proved slightly more diicult. The company
eventually narrowed down its selection of
systems from three dierent manufacturers.
“In the end, the main selling point was
the fact that it is an all HPE solution: the
combination of the HPE StoreEver MSL
6480 Tape Library, LTO6 tapes, HPE Data
Protector Software 9.0 and the integrated
HPE StoreOnce 4900 system means that
we aren’t restricted when it comes to things
such as the connectivity options available,”
explains Böckler. “With HPE StoreOnce,
HEIDELBERG can choose to store its
backups on either a NAS, StoreOnce
Catalyst or a virtual tape library.”
Brecht comments: “We would not have been
able to have all of these options had we
chosen to source components from dierent
manufacturers. HEIDELBERG currently uses
all three types of data storage. We have
optimised the system’s performance by
using HPE StoreOnce Catalyst over Fibre
Channel as it means we no longer have to
back up physical servers connected directly
to the SAN via IP. We can now run part
of the backup via the 8 GB Fibre Channel
network, thereby relieving some of the IP
traic. So we can spread the load better.”