Offering support, improving reliability

02/01/2007

Needing a solution that offered centralised administration and disk based backups, Microsoft evaluated data protection software. Already the incumbent solution, Symantec Backup Exec beat out the competition. Symantec engineers worked closely with Microsoft to develop specific functionality that Microsoft needed. Now Microsoft is realising tangible benefits, including $2 million projected savings on tape hardware and media, while achieving high levels of reliability — 99.5 percent success for backup jobs and 100 percent success for tape restores.

World class data protection for a world class datacenter

To see best practices for managing a Windows based IT infrastructure, the place to look is Microsoft itself. Supporting an operation consisting of more than 60,000 employees in 464 locations worldwide is a challenge and demands nothing less than world class data protection. Symantec fits that need perfectly. Microsoft IT has had a long and valued relationship with Symantec, going back to 1999. Over the years, the two companies have worked closely to ensure that Symantec data management software products support the newest features in Microsoft products as soon as they are released.

Symantec proves its value again

“The Central Admin Server Option of Backup Exec was a key factor in choosing Symantec,” says Jason Watson, Manager, Data Protection Services Engineering, Microsoft. “It allows us to back up over 5,000 servers worldwide, something we simply couldn’t do without centralised administration.”

An additional reason was Symantec’s enthusiastic support for disk based backup and recovery, as it offers a range of benefits, including faster backup and recovery, improved reliability, simplified IT administration and lower total cost of ownership.

“Disk based backups have a number of technical advantages,” explains Scott Gerhke, systems engineer for Microsoft IT. “Incremental and differential backups are hard on tape drives because the mechanism is constantly starting and stopping. Disk based backups eliminate that problem, reducing maintenance and tape media costs. Symantec Backup Exec for Windows Servers had the best support for disk based backups of all the solutions we considered.”

Smooth worldwide migration in only five months

Symantec Education Services helped in the transition by providing training for Microsoft’s IT staff based in Hyderabad, India. Six backup administrators attended a course on the Backup Exec Central Admin Server Option via Symantec Virtual Academy.

Centralised administration supports Microsoft’s utility computing

Backup Exec with the Central Admin Server Option is currently backing up more than 66 terabytes weekly from a range of enterprise applications. Microsoft also performs full tape backups twice a month using over 500 tape drives in ADIC Scalar 100, ADIC Scalar 1000, ADIC Scalar 1200, ADIC FastStore and Compaq libraries. Backup tapes are archived offsite. The Backup Exec Library Expansion Option allows Microsoft to scale by leveraging additional drives within multi drive tape libraries.

Seventeen HP ProLiant Central Admin Servers (nine in the Puget Sound region, three in other U.S. locations, three in Europe and two in Asia) and 213 managed media servers manage the worldwide backup process, running over 400,000 backup jobs a month. In Puget Sound alone, Microsoft has more than 32,600 different backup jobs, all managed by Backup Exec.

Backup Exec has meshed well with Microsoft’s utility computing initiative. “To provide accurate bill-backs for data protection services, we need access to the information about backup jobs,” says Watson. “Symantec and Microsoft co-developed the Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) Integration Pack to allow us to monitor Backup Exec jobs from MOM. That simplifies our datacenter administration by letting us do all monitoring operations from a single MOM console. It also feeds data about backup jobs directly into our bill-back system, streamlining the accounting process. It's just another example of how Symantec helps us stay at the leading edge of data protection technology."

Backup Exec pays off

“Backup Exec is highly scalable, so we have been able to consolidate our media servers,” explains Gerhke.

“Before, we had 15 media servers but we’ve been able to eliminate 4 of them, a 26 percent reduction. Having fewer servers saves us time and money in maintenance and administration costs.”

Microsoft has also been able to consolidate tape hardware. “On the first media server that we converted to Backup Exec, we reduced the number of tape drives by 75 percent, from 48 to 12,” says Watson. “Overall, we expect to save over $2 million by moving to disk based backups.”

A continuing partnership

Microsoft continues to look to Symantec for the newest technology for data protection. “We have deployed Veritas Storage Exec™ from Symantec on a number of servers and are evaluating how it can help us achieve further efficiencies in managing our storage resources,” says Watson. Microsoft is also evaluating the use of the Backup Exec Advanced Disk-based Backup Option as a way to use snapshots created by their EMC and HP storage systems, reducing the impact of backup operations.

“The move to a utility model is paying off for Microsoft,” says Watson. “Veritas (now Symantec) Backup Exec has played a major role by providing reliable, flexible data protection for our production data.”

Feature Articles

Offering support, improving reliability