The AODA currently provides IT support and management for 32 remote offices serving approximately 1,000 end users. In a field dependent upon the highest standards of data integrity, protection and retention, it was critical for the AODA to implement the disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity solutions necessary for fulfillment of its objectives.
Case Study: New Mexico AODA
Defending Data: New Mexico State AODA Presents a Compelling Case for Disaster Recovery and Business ContinuityThe New Mexico Administrative Office of the District Attorneys (AODA) is a state-level government agency that centralizes information technology functions for all district attorney offices in the state of New Mexico. The AODA currently provides IT support and management for 32 remote offices serving approximately 1,000 end users. In a field dependent upon the highest standards of data integrity, protection and retention, it was critical for the AODA to implement the disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity solutions necessary for fulfillment of its objectives. The Challenge: Burdensome Recovery Processes and Long Recovery Times ® ®The AODA's IT infrastructure is largely Windows -based, with Microsoft Exchange and SQL serving as the most widely used applications. Tape drives in each of the 32 offices served as the only backup method, and often proved to be unreliable. The disparate environments and lack of centralized backup operations created significant challenges in protecting data and maximizing employee productivity. Since the AODA also did not have DR technologies in place, it was at risk of permanently losing data in the event of a natural disaster or everyday server or application failure. "Reliability was a major problem. We had no way to ensure backups were getting done, and with what regularity, i.e. on a daily or weekly basis," said Eddie Chavez, CIO of the New Mexico AODA. "We also had issues with database or system administrators inadvertently deleting the wrong case file. It could take us an entire day to recover lost files, if at all, after the burdensome process of finding the specific tape. This drained IT staff time and also reduced productivity for employees whose jobs were dependent upon those lost files. E-mail and application outages also caused problems. Therefore, our three major objectives in evaluating a disaster recovery solution were to improve the recovery process, recovery times and retention." The Solution: InMage Systems' DR-ScoutAfter researching several different solutions, the New Mexico AODA implemented DR-Scout, a combined DR and business continuity software offering from Santa Clara-based InMage Systems. Based on patent-pending continuous data protection (CDP) technology, DR-Scout addresses disaster recovery, continuous local backup and application availability. The AODA found DR-Scout to be more flexible than replication/snapshot solutions, and more efficient at data recovery than virtual tape library (VTL) or de-duplication technologies. The AODA leveraged DR-Scout to consolidate the backup operations of its 32 offices. Data from its southern group of district offices was replicated into a facility in Las Crusas, with the northern districts replicating into an Albuquerque facility. E-mail, messaging systems and databases were set up to automatically fail over from the primary site to the secondary site during disasters and everyday disruptions. "Microsoft Exchange and SQL are easily our two most critical applications," says Chavez. "DR-Scout repli-cates our entire Exchange database, giving us the ability to recover complete mailboxes that may have gotten deleted. Previously this would take two days or more and sometimes we would just give up. Since we have a redundant system in place now, it only takes a matter of minutes. We simply go into our retention logs, check the time stamp volume, recover the files and export them back to users within minutes or even seconds. I cannot stress the significance of this as DA offices rely heavily on e-mail to do their jobs on a daily basis." Chavez continues, "The improvement in our retention logs is another main benefit of using DR-Scout. There are rules within the state of New Mexico and the U.S. Constitution that govern everything from where impor-tant data is located and how it is preserved, to the amount of time it must be retained, and a plan for retrieving it. Cases can be appealed many years later, so it's important for the DA offices to keep data accessible for 20 or even 30 years or more. DR-Scout makes it very easy for us to adhere to our retention policies and repro-duce data when necessary." Best Practices in DR and Business Continuity: The BenefitsDR-Scout provided the New Mexico Administrative Office of District Attorneys with a powerful disaster recov-ery and business con... [download for more]
