Sift and Prioritize

Devender Kumar Sharma, manager, data center support services, Applied
Materials India

Devising a failure-proof backup architecture is always a major challenge.
With rapidly growing digital data, most companies are struggling to find a
suitable measure of data backup from its existing hardware infrastructure.
Applied Materials India is no exception.

Devender Kumar Sharma, manager, data center support services, Applied
Materials India says, "We have 15 TB of data generated by applications, file
services, and email system for full backup. All the data is stored on central
storage (SAN/NAS) with data de-duplication feature enabled. Data de-duplication
ensures that they are backing up only one copy of data, leading to saving of
storage space and backup media."

The company takes daily incremental, weekly full, and monthly full backups
with different retention level as per the business needs and regulatory
compliance requirements. Daily backup has a retention period of two weeks, that
of weekly full is one month, and monthly full has a retention period of ten
years. The company also does backup restoration drill periodically to ensure
data integrity on the tape media. Applied Materials uses Symantec Veritas
NetBackup Enterprise Server 6.5.4 for servers, and Symantec DLO (desktop and
laptop options) for PC and data backups.

PC Suraj

surajp@cybermedia.co.in

Jerome Mathew, IT manager, iSmart Business Solutions

Data storage, more specifically, what data has to be stored is one of the
key concerns for any organization. Data duplication is one challenge that IT
managers need to deal with on a priority basis.

Jerome Mathew, IT manager, iSmart Business Solutionsa company that provides
ERP solutions to agro-businessesis preparing to avoid any kind of data
duplication and accordingly has put a strategy in place. "Earlier, one of the
challenges we faced was online backup. However, when the company started using
Veritas backup software, we were able to back up all our files at a quick
response time. We do a daily backup of data, and through the use of Acronis True
Image software we ensure that data duplication does not happen. We also do an
incremental backup, since we believe it is one of the ways to do the fastest
backup requiring the least storage space," he says.

The company incidentally uses an Exchange server that keeps track of and
records all the data in the organization.

It also uses Quantum LTO tape drive and 400GB HP data cartridge, and has
provisions for user document backup such as saving and backing up of Word and
Excel files.

PC Suraj

surajp@cybermedia.co.in

Surender Khunekari, senior EDP, IT, Kumar Builders

For a realty company like Kumar Builders, it is very important to have a
system that automatically does a backup of transactions on a daily basis,
especially during peak days when there are promotions or sales activities and
also at the end of the month. With this view in mind, one year back Kumar
Builders decided to introduce the Symantec 12.5 version for its backup strategy.
In addition, there is a HP auto backup, where the functions are set in such a
manner that the system automatically starts taking a backup. "From the time of
introduction of this solution, we have noticed that there has been 89% benefit
through its usage. Like for example, if tomorrow is a holiday you need not come
to office to take a backup," says Surender Khunekari, senior EDP, IT, Kumar
Builders. Virtualization has been introduced with this solution that makes it
easy to monitor all functions at the workplace. Khunekari is also trying to
evaluate how effective and helpful cloud computing would be, and in turn enable
Kumar Builders to move towards virtualization. "The best part is that it has
helped to save costs, as we do not have to employ a full-time administrator to
do the backup work. Earlier, we used to take our backups on DVDs, but now we use
cartridges. In the future, we intend to move towards the virtualzsation mode,"
he adds.

Shilpa Shanbhag

shilpas@cybermedia.co.in