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Additional Customer Quotes |
AutoVAULT Customer:
Before AutoVAULT:
• Struggled with the setup of IBM's Disaster Recovery Manager and were not able to produce the report they required.
• Unreliable management of onsite-offsite tape movement
With AutoVAULT:
“AutoVAULT solved two major problems we were having with IBM’s Disaster Recovery Manager (DRM). Within 30 minutes of installing AutoVAULT, we had it flawlessly automating our tape vaulting process and printing all the media rotation reports we needed. With AutoVAULT, we know the correct media is rotated offsite every day and our data is secure!
When we moved our TSM system off the mainframe a few years ago, we needed to change the way tape vaulting was managed and reported. Disaster Recovery Manager (DRM) was IBM’s solution for our tape vaulting and disaster recovery needs.
But, we had two major problems with DRM:
• We had to spend a lot of time writing scripts to automate
the tape vaulting process, since this is not done
automatically by DRM. The scripts were prone to errors and
we really didn't want to spend all that time writing and
maintaining them.
• Our management requires detailed reporting of tape
movements and DRM does not include any reporting. With DRM,
you must write your own custom scripts and queries to get
the reports you need.
After struggling for weeks to get DRM to meet these needs, we gave up and purchased AutoVAULT.
Within 30 minutes, AutoVAULT had solved both
of these problems:
• It automates the tape vaulting process with no scripting
necessary, and does extensive error checking.
• To meet the reporting requirements, AutoVAULT 's
ready-to-use Media Rotation reports tell us which media to
vault offsite and which to return. A report of my complete
vault inventory is also created. All three of these reports
can be automatically emailed to technicians and operators
daily and automatically printed.
With AutoVAULT, I now feel secure about the status of our data and know that the courier is always moving the correct tapes. We should have used AutoVAULT from the start!
Mark Loy
Distributed Systems Administrator
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
AutoVAULT Reseller:
Before AutoVAULT:
•
Difficult for our customers to execute daily TSM tape
operations without having a TSM technician onsite
• Cumbersome to maintain current disaster recovery
information for each customer’s TSM server
With AutoVAULT:
"AutoVAULT completely automates our customers’ tape management. Without even understanding TSM or AutoVAULT, operators can move media as directed by the AutoVAULT reports, minimizing human error.
As a reseller whose TSM® practice spans the range from pure software sales to complete outsourcing of our customers’ backup and recovery services, we have found AutoVAULT to be an invaluable tool in protecting our customers’ business critical data.
AutoVAULT’s ease of installation and level of automation makes sending tapes offsite a painless process. Delivering the information about the offsite tapes to the right people is a snap. We configure AutoVAULT to distribute the tape rotation reports via email, enabling us to deliver the information to anyone who needs it, including operators who can easily move media as instructed by the reports. We even email the tape rotation reports directly to the courier company, eliminating errors that could be made when manually transcribing the information to paper.
Whether TSM is managing a few hundred gigabytes worth of data, or tens of terabytes, AutoVAULT fits the bill. AutoVAULT readily works with all of the tape libraries that we and our customers use, from small DLT® libraries to high-end LTO® and Magstar® libraries, and easily manages whatever tape movement is required, whether it’s two tapes or several dozen tapes.
AutoVAULT adds an extra layer of protection for our customers whose TSM operations we outsource. We use AutoVAULT’s ability to send all of the data necessary for recovery offsite electronically. This enables us to maintain a repository of their recovery scripts that is automatically kept current. When it’s time to go to the hotsite for testing, we burn a CD with everything that is needed to recover their TSM environment and go. If any questions come up about what the courier is supposed to bring to the hotsite, the information to answer those questions is at our fingertips. Our customers’ data is more secure with AutoVAULT!”
Bill
Boyer
Systems Engineer
DSS Corp., USA
AutoVAULT Customer:
Before AutoVAULT:
• Manual tape management was overwhelming and error-prone
• SQL Server database backup was time-consuming and unreliable
With AutoVAULT:
“We were struggling to back up our 220 GB SQL Server database. Tivoli’s DRM could not help us, but AutoVAULT is solving our space and timing problems.
We have been running TSM on AIX® with AutoVAULT since 1999. AutoVAULT was so much easier to implement than DRM® and allowed us to easily automate daily operations and disaster recovery. It has been running without error or attention ever since.
We use the TSM Scheduler to 1.) Back up our data to copy pools, 2.) Back up the TSM database, and then 3.) Initiate AutoVAULT. AutoVAULT automatically ejects the media to our 3494 I/O ports and prints media rotation reports for our operators. Copies of the reports are also emailed to me so I can occasionally review them. The process runs extremely well, freeing me (the system administrator) to attend to other tasks. We trust AutoVAULT to manage our backup media for us.
AutoVAULT also minimizes tape usage and enables us to get our data offsite faster. One of our SQL Server® databases was over 220 gigabytes and could not be backed up incrementally. Duplicating the data to copy pool tapes was taking too long and was delaying our offsite vaulting. We isolated the SQL TDP backups in a separate primary pool and had AutoVAULT manage them for us. AutoVAULT sends these 3590 tapes offsite daily and automatically brings them back when they expire.
HIPAA rules mandate that all health information we store at the hospital be protected by a disaster recovery plan. We have confidence that AutoVAULT’s recovery scripts will always bring back our data in a timely manner to meet this important requirement.”
Deb
Demler
System and Database Administrator
The Reading Hospital and Medical Center, USA
AutoVAULT Customer:
Before AutoVAULT:
• Slow, frustrating, manual disaster recovery tests
• Unreliable tape vaulting using home-grown scripts
With AutoVAULT:
“I was impressed with the speed and accuracy AutoVAULT brought to our disaster tests. It’s an affordable solution that reliably protects our critical business data.
In previous disaster recovery tests at the Sungard hot-site, we had to manually restore our Tivoli Storage Manager® (TSM) AIX® environment. The recovery process was long, tedious, and error-prone. We turned to AutoVAULT to automate the recovery process. The AutoVAULT recovery scripts quickly restored our TSM server, allowing us to restore client data hours earlier.
Also, prior to using AutoVAULT, we ran scripts to manage the offsite vaulting of tapes. This solution did not help with disaster recovery. The TSM administrator had to manually recreate the TSM environment, determine the latest database backup to restore, and reconfigure the TSM server options and licenses. Because we don’t frequently perform disaster recovery tests, it was a challenge to smoothly restore the TSM server. AutoVAULT's recovery scripts made the disaster test smooth, fast, and accurate.
Maintaining the custom scripts previously used for vaulting also presented challenges for us. Not only was the functionality limited, but the custom scripts were not robust at handling errors. On one occasion, new database backups were not being created. Unaware of the problem, the script was still deleting the existing backups. Only one TSM database backup remained when we discovered the problem. AutoVAULT always retains the requested number of database backups based on cycles, not on dates, and would not have deleted the database backups. We feel safer securing our data with AutoVAULT.”
Gene
Guinter
Operations Manager
National Penn Bank, USA
Additional Customer Quotes
"We have been using AutoVAULT for over 6 years now. It has been flawlessly reliable."
Bob Bailey, President
Bailey Technical Associates, Inc.
"I am too busy in my job to be an expert at everything. AutoVAULT's built-in automation and reporting saved me from having to do a lot of custom scripting to make IBM’s Disaster Recovery Manager, work the way we needed it to... By lunch-time I had my offsite vaulting process completely automated and producing tape rotation reports and recovery scripts. We have been so impressed with AutoVAULT we are now purchasing licenses for additional sites."
Chris Rietmann, Manager, System Engineer
Delta Dental of PA
"Technical Support has been extremely helpful. Any time I have contacted them, they have always responded promptly with helpful answers and knowledge."
Darlene Wnukowski, Lead Systems Programmer
Schreiber Foods, Inc.
"We needed a Vaulting & Disaster Recovery solution for a customer without a high-end TSM technician on-site. We chose AutoVAULT due to its straightforward configuration and its easy-to-use daily automations. AutoVAULT has been very reliable and their technical support is great!"
Oscar Ramirez, Storage Architect
Perot
Systems
For our disaster recovery testing we wanted the quickest and easiest disaster recovery procedure possible without making any compromises. In AutoVAULT we found exactly what we were looking for ... and more.
The disaster recovery process is not something that is done often and can therefore be a frustrating experience. With AutoVAULT and its clearly detailed disaster recovery steps, our recovery testing was very smooth and injected us with the confidence that, should disaster strike, we would be able to easily recover from it.
Typically, in a disaster recovery situation, the recovery server is configured differently from the original server, as was the case in our test scenario. We were glad to find clear and concise instructions to address this issue in AutoVAULT's disaster recovery documentation.
From the installation and configuration to daily usage, AutoVAULT has been a pleasure. It just runs every day without any problems whatsoever. Tape movement reports automatically print out, and are also emailed to the Operations Manager. Our critical files required for disaster recovery are sent via FTP to an offsite location. All in one simple step!”
Riaz
Essay
Senior Network Systems Consultant
University of Natal, South Africa
"I have recommended AutoVAULT to all of my customers that do off-site tape vaulting...it more than pays for itself right away, plus the configuration is VERY fast and easy."
Wanda Prather, TSM Certified Specialist
Jacob & Sundstrom, Inc.
"I tested AutoVAULT and found it very simple to use - instantly configurable, and ready to go in only 5 or 10 minutes - I was very impressed!"
Roy Lake, Tibbett & Britten Group European IT
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