Ditto brings Dunwoody Airline Services in for a safe landing
The Client
Dunwoody Airline Services provides expert cargo services for the airline industry and freight community with handling facilities at major airports throughout the UK and Ireland.
The business operates one HP exchange server and three Bull servers, which specifically host operational applications. The business has 130 desktop users and IT Manager, Carl Williams, oversees the IT infrastructure, employing Icomm Technologies for extended support of the server environment.
The Challenge
Dunwoody Airline Services maintains a six year old server estate. Whilst this remains relatively stable, Carl Williams acknowledged that the business could be open to loss of data if a critical server disaster occurred. He acknowledged that business continuity planning needed to be tightened and an extra layer of protection put in place. Dunwoody liaised with Icomm Technologies to find an appropriate solution.
The Solution
Ditto Disaster Recovery, from Icomm, offers a simple approach to high-end DR compliance that safe guards business without the high end cost.
It has saved us time and money that would otherwise have been spent using back-up tapes, recovering, overlaying and reinstating our databases all of which are high risk strategies with little guaranteed outcomes.
Carl Williams, Dunwoody Airline Services
This service gets businesses back to business fast by taking a snapshot of critical server structure and data. This mirror image is stored on Icomm’s remote storage vault in Birmingham with added failover provided by a satellite location in Manchester.
If a server, office or department becomes un-useable through fire, flood or even Swine Flu then business operations can continue remotely by connecting to a replica environment exclusively hosted by Icomm.
The Issue
Dunwoody has a system of multiple data back-ups in place, which account for the different shift patterns of various departments. Back-up for the databases is auto-scripted for 8pm every evening once the accounts department has finished, with tape back-ups running at midnight. This system worked well for Dunwoody until a very rare failure occurred in between back ups.
Dunwoody’s Carl Williams explains: “A pair of mirror drives crashed in our server estate - two hard drives that run alongside each other performing the same data saving tasks. The two drives are there so that if one fails the other can continue and nothing is lost allowing staff to carry on with no drop in service.
The Benefits
Icomm’s Ditto Disaster Recovery provided a resilient approach that alleviated downtime, costly database rebuilds, loss of operations and loss of business.
Carl Williams said: "Ditto has reduced our downtime by 85% compared to our old tape based continuity plan, minimising impact on daily operations.
Having experienced its capabilities in a disaster, it has reinforced to the board that this cost effective adoption has been worth the investment. It has already paid for itself.
Carl Williams, Dunwoody Airline Services
"Ditto backs up our systems incrementally; meaning that it updates our server and data image whenever things change, get added or are updated. So, it enabled us to restore our servers right up to the point before the failure.
"Ditto is a non-profit expense, but more critically, it is a profit protecting expense.
"Ditto has saved us thousands of pounds. It provides business continuity with fixed costs, which has helped us control our overheads and access credible DR. Without it, this recent failure would have impacted negatively on the business."
If you would like to know more about what Icomm could do to benefit your company, or have any other enquiries, please
contact our sales team.
or for more information on this article or the content discussed within, please contact Ian Callens on 0121 248 7931.