Highlighed Technologies: Zenith ARCA Backup and Recovery Solution

Introduction

Based in Springfield, MA, HAP Housing is a nonprofit organization that, in over 35 years, has earned a reputation as the region's leader in facilitating access to housing and homeownership by collaborating with other community-based organizations to create affordable housing and to revitalize urban neighborhoods. IBS was contacted to perform a Network Assessment for HAP in the summer of 2009, and uncovered multiple pain points in the existing Backup and Disaster Recovery solution.

Assessment

The IBS review uncovered frequent failures of the current backup solution and a lack of any off-site replication using existing replication software. After reviewing their desired outcomes, IBS recommended replacing the existing solution with a new Zenith Advanced Recovery and Continuity Appliance (ARCA).

Solution

A primary ARCA unit would be used to back up all 9 production servers and replicate the server backups off-site to a secondary ARCA unit in their Northampton location. In the event HAP were to lose one of their servers, the primary ARCA can run a failover server that will take over the functions of the downed server within minutes, keeping their organization running and connected with data up to the last backup. Furthermore, the ARCA will take snapshots of their servers every 15 minutes keeping data loss at a minimum while allowing HAP to simply and easily restore files and emails in minutes. Should a full disaster occur, the Zenith ARCA in Springfield replicates to the secondary unit in Northampton using ARCA-to-ARCA replication capabilities, allowing the ARCA's fail-over server features to bring their servers up off-site and keep their organization running.