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SEP ReferencesContent

Financial Service Provider 4 Bank of CologneBackup and recovery competence in the banking world

Energy Provider 6 Rhine-Main Pipeline CompanyCentral data backup at a pipeline operator for mineral oil products

Printing Industry 10 MediaprintCentral data backup using SEP sesam saves time and money for the largest Austrian newspaper and magazine publishing company

Internet Audience Measurement 14 INFOnlineScalable and secure storage and backup architecture

Space Industry 16 Space Research InstituteSEP sesam reduced backup time from four days to four hours

Financial Service Provider 18 Grand Bank & Trust of FloridaChoosing the right backup and archiving solutions were critical

SEP Software Corp., 4001 Discovery Drive, Suite 260, Boulder, CO 80303, USA, +1.303.449.0100w w w . s e p s o f t w a r e . c o m


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HP-

readyTM

®


One Enterprise-Wide Backup SolutionSEP sesam: Backup, Restore & Disaster Recovery



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Bank of CologneBackup and Recovery Competence in the Banking World

The Bank of Cologne has been using the Linux operating system for years. Their standardized application for data backup and recovery SEP sesam optimizes the limited resources at the bank and maximizes performance for other important applications.

A small, well-run bank with a flat management structure can be flexible while searching for new business and still give current customers optimal service. The key for a successful relationship with the customer in the banking world lies in the availability of accurate and timely information. The IT infrastructure plays an incredibly important role in data acquisition and maintenance since IT activities for banking applications must be efficient, secure and cost effective and offer high-availability to reduce risks wherever possible. The IT infrastructure of large, cooperative banking institutions is based upon two basic tasks. The primary function of the system is to manage customer account activity. In addition, it supplies bank specific IT needs including auditing controls and marketing needs.

The Bank of Cologne implemented a Linux solution in 2001 and they have been using ‘SuSE Linux Enterprise Server’ (SLES) since that time (today called Novell). An Oracle database high availability solution sits on top of SLES and manages a data warehouse with full functionality implemented. The Oracle database collects relevant account and customer information. The data is then provided to the central controlling division for data mining. Important information is gathered for Sales and Marketing strategy development. The Data Warehouse delivers consolidation accounting providing further sources of information for use and targeted market segment product development. New system requirements resulted in the purchase of new computer

hardware including: two HP Proliant Server DL585 with Dual Core CPUs, 8 GByte Memory and an external disk subsystem HP MSA 30 with a total capacity of 3 T-Byte. In addition, a VMware ESX Server Virtual Infrastructure Node with Virtual SMP und Virtual Center-Agent was acquired. “When we consider the economic performance of the bank we value high-availability, security, performance and economy equally. The SuSE Linux Enterprise Server along with SEP sesam has proven itself over and over again,” according to Harald Grams, Project Director at the bank. All other systems and services run on the Linux platform including, Samba, Intranet, DNS, System management and the central data backup server. Today all systems are running “SEP sesam” from Bavarian Software House SEP AG. SEP sesam has proven itself as the most reliable, easy to use and economic solution ever tested by the bank’s IT department. It even backs up GAD eG System’s specialized banking software.

SEP sesam fits Enterprise Backup Requirements

During the course of operations SEP sesam has delivered more than was originally anticipated. “We were absolutely convinced that SEP sesam was the solution for our complete enterprise backup requirements,” according to Grams. “The volume of data and the security planning that we had to take into account and implementation of the data security concept was an almost overwhelming task. One of the most important requirements for any bank is a reliable handling of the mass of data created on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis and the time it takes to back it up reliably and securely. This planning resulting in the decision to select the hardware from HP and the perfect software solution for data backup security from SEP. Backing up the volume of data of 1.2 T-Bytes per day was a requirement



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that few backup software solutions could satisfy. For this reason we selected the reliable LTO tape technology. In addition, the file security backup software had to maintain three online Oracle databases and at the same time provide a simple, safe and centrally managed administration tool. The obligatory safety rules for German banks require a daily ending auditing trail for all tape from the systems the bank uses. That meant that all tapes and data had to be sent to an off-site location to minimize the chance of loss by fire theft or other catastrophe. Due to specific requirements at the Bank, SEP sesam was implemented in two separate phases on two completely separate networks that managed two independent data warehouses. Later, when the separate networks were integrated into one large network both SEP sesam backup environments created for the earlier configurations were integrated seamlessly and within minutes.”

Overtime the true value of the SEP sesam data backup software became apparent. It was especially evident in the handling various media types that the bank had used in the past. “The flexibility inherent in the backup product and the ease of configuration along with the description of the current and planned network backup requirements were the deciding factors for us at the Bank of Cologne,” according to Grams. In addition, “The ability to handle all related problems with our media from two separate network systems was a decided relief. Otherwise, the work to combine the two systems could have been enormous”, said Grams. “The backup philosophy implemented by SEP sesam fulfills our current and future data backup requirements.”

SEP sesam - a true winner

“After a short startup phase SEP sesam has reliably backed up the bank’s data warehousing needs and the bank’s heterogeneous client sever infrastructure. SEP sesam has proven extremely robust and reliable, a true winner over our last backup product ARCserve.” It was again proven when the bank switched out its OS/2 Operating System in the computer center while using SEP sesam for backup. Today all of the Bank of Cologne’s computer systems are backed up by SEP sesam. The inclusion of the separate data warehouses for marketing, consulting and for the computer center have proven to be timesavings of up to 60 per cent of the daily administration, maintenance and update costs. The data backup hardware the server is connected to an

Eonstor Disk Storage with three (3) T-Byte storage capacity and an additional tape library with dual tape drives. Further growth is planned as the needs of the bank increases and has also been recognized in the planning and future use of SEP sesam.

SEP sesam Support-Concept

The bank signed an Advanced Support Contract with SEP AG for the continued planning for future requirement assessments. Remote access to SEP engineers with a response time of less than 4-hours when reported within a time frame of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. assures high availability. In the future the security solution implemented at the Bank of Cologne will be installed by with SEP AG’s assistance. Ratiodata IT Solutions and Services is system solutions provider delivering high quality services for all cooperative banks in the northern German community.

Bank of Cologne

Offering high value investment products and consulting the bank is one of the largest German Cooperative Banks (Deutsche Volksbanken) with a balance of approximately 1.4 Billion Euros und 32.000 active accounts (year end 2005). More than 90.000 Kölner (Cologne inhabitants) trust their money and financial well being to the bank, a dependable partner to individuals and mid-sized companies. The bank has over 30 offices in the service area.

Ratiodata IT Solutions & Services

Ratiodata IT Solutions & Services has over 330 Employees and is one of the largest system houses and IT service providers in Germany. It is a subsidiary of the GAD eG, which provides Computer Center Services and IT consulting to over 470 Cooperative Banks, (Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken) and has over 30 years experience. Ratiodata provides computer services, archival services, personnel management and specialized to solutions to the banking industry within the GAD eG.



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Rhine-Main Pipeline Company

Oil Pipeline Operator selects SEP sesam for Mission Critical Backup Solution

The Rhine-Main Pipeline Company (RMR mbH) had a complex infrastructure problem due to multiple operating systems running various applications. They found, to the satisfaction of senior management, a simple solution to backup and manage company vital information — SEP sesam. They implemented a SEP sesam host server solution that backs up, manages and controls many computers in a heterogeneous computing environment. A solution no previous vendor was able to deliver satisfactorily.

The products must be conveyed separately to various processing locations along the 524 km transportation network to eight different storage facilities as well as to Petro-Chemical factories and consumer centers in Oberhausen, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and Ludwigshafen. The amount of liquids transported is equal to almost 400,000 railroad tanker cars annually! High performance pumping stations speed the deliveries from north to south with a “travel speed” of approximately five kilometers per hour.

Heterogeneous Server Environment

The operations center is at RMR headquarters in Cologne-Godorf, with a staff of 85 employees controlling the workflow and monitoring all processes related to the pipeline. Highly skilled engineers are constantly monitoring the station around the clock to provide safe and efficient transport for each petroleum batch, be it heating oil or other critical product. In the heart of the HQ is the data processing centre where servers controlling pipeline flows reside alongside multiple servers running an additional 12 applications performing the balance of the activities required to run the facility; from communication to global position monitoring. A major application, Smallworld Geospatial Information System (GIS) from Geomagic, runs on Tru64 Unix and it manages all relevant data regarding

Central administration of the 524-kilometres-long pipeline network with up-to-date process control.



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petroleum transit below ground. The other computers are running Windows Server 2003 operating system and many other vendor applications. Two database servers, running Oracle 10, interface between the process control system and the office communication system. One database is the repository for all data relevant to the pipeline’s operation security. This includes measurements to determine pressure and temperature fluctuations, ultrasonic emission monitoring and measurement of material corrosion that help identify potential problems and allow for scheduling and performing preventative maintenance. The second Oracle Server collects performance data necessary to perform corporate accounting activities that flow seamlessly to the SAP ERP system. Using a SAP/R3 system all data from the RMR activities are recorded step by step from order processing, process development, maintenance contracts and institutional accounting activities. The SAP production system is mirrored by a second SAP server, which also monitors system activity. Other servers include two Citrix Terminal servers, one email server, one groupware server running IBM’s Lotus Notes, and an additional Oracle database used exclusively by the Human Resource Department. A fax server rounds up the RMR server infrastructure. The entire RMR environment, running multiple applications from many vendors, is backed up using only one software: SEP sesam – functional, reliable and perfectly suited for today’s multi O/S heterogeneous computing environments.

Efficient Data Backup

RMR had decided earlier to implement SEP sesam for backing up the data from the Tru64 servers since SEP was one of the few companies that supported that operating system. When a comprehensive IT restructuring took place between 2004 and 2007 RMR testing and analysis began in earnest looking at other backup software alternatives. But, once again, SEP sesam proved its value and RMR integrated SEP sesam into the organization as their only backup solution. “SEP sesam’s reliability and breadth of product offerings, from supported operating systems, databases and groupware solutions, proved the most efficient and cost-effective solution available,” said Gerd Schmitz, IT Lead for RMR’s Office Communication Department. Since SEP sesam provides a centralized integrated solution to back up the Linux/Unix and Windows operating systems and has vendor

The Problem

The Rhine-Main Pipeline Company (RMR mbH) had a complex infrastructure problem due to multiple operating systems running various applications.

The Solution

They found, to the satisfaction of senior management, a simple solution to backup and manage company vital information—SEP sesam. They implemented a SEP sesam host server solution that backs up, manages and controls many computers in a heterogeneous computing environment. A solution no previous vendor was able to deliver satisfactorily.

Company Description

Founded in 1965, RMR is now a cooperative venture between the Shell, BP Amoco and Exxon Mobil conglomerates and is responsible for transporting more than fifteen million cubic meters of petroleum products including heating oil, fuel, naphtha and aviation fuel to facilities throughout northern Germany. RMR receives product from the Rhine-Rotterdam Pipeline (RRP) at Venlo on the Dutch-German border as well as from a storage facility at Dinslaken and from the Rhineland Refinery at Gondorf near Cologne.

certifications from SAP AG, IBM/Lotus Notes and Oracle, RMR decided to secure it’s entire infrastructure centrally, using a single backup and recovery solution. “SEP offers by far the most economical solution while delivering stellar performance our customers demand,” declares Schmitz.



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Pumping station of the Rhine-Main Pipeline Company

RMR utilized SEP sesam multi-streaming technology to backup to disk. Here again SEP sesam outshines it’s competitors in speed and accuracy since backup speeds are in excess of 400GB per hour assuring backups are performed in the time allotted without interfering with RMR 24x7 service commitment. To prevent against a disaster RMR mirrors data using SEP data replication software to a Network Attached Storage server at a remote site. SEP sesam’s centralized design and additional modules allows system administrators to perform backup and restore tasks from anywhere on the network.

With weekly backup data volume hovering at 2.9 TB, RMR runs a full backup on weekends for all data servers, programs, system status and registry. After backing up to disk RMR copies data utilizing SEP’s Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape technology to a Quantum Scalar 24 tape library serving as the main repository for all of RMR enterprise critical data. This activity is performed simply and easily via SEP’s industry leading Java based GUI. RMR also performs daily incremental backups to assure data availability on an additional .5 TB per day.



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RMR headquarter in Cologne-Godorf

Infrastructure Virtualization: The Next Phase

RMR has decided to further update and modernize its operations by adding virtualization to the mix and is planning to consolidate servers and increase the number of virtual machines to enhance performance and efficiency. Using VMware ESX host server platforms RMR is moving rapidly forward and according to Herr Schmitz, IT Director, “Since SEP sesam’s already provides a world-class VMware ESX host server backup capability no further changes to our backup strategy is required. Nor do we have to invest a great deal of money to provide online backup for our VMware servers and Guest VM’s,” stated Schmitz.



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MediaprintCentralized Data Backup Using SEP sesam Saves Time and Money for Austria’s Largest Newspaper

and Magazine Publishing Company

How do you store 30,000 pages of news, graphics, artwork and pictures a week? How do you assure the printing capacity of 18 million copies of Austrian newspapers and magazines each week? The answer for Mediaprint is simply two words: SEP sesam.

Mediaprint GmbH & Co. KG is the largest newspaper and magazine publisher in Austria. Printing approximately 18 million copies of Austrian newspapers weekly (that’s 216 Million per year!) at ten (10) Mediaprint locations spread to every corner of Austria. That’s is almost three newspapers for every resident of the country per week!

A massive quantity of raw material must be purchased, organized and distributed to accomplish this Herculean feat. Over 5 million pounds of newsprint, 28,000 kilograms of ink and 30,000 plates are consumed weekly.

The data volume is so massive that Mediaprint employs 12 clustered nodes (from 2 to 7 servers each) and a further 50 servers around the country to secure data from an additional 2,300 workstations used by company employees.

This staff of writers and artists creates thousands of articles, editorials, graphical representations and artwork and photographs weekly that all need to be backed up for reference and cataloging. In addition, accounting, marketing and sales staff input customer information to create 4 TB of data per week.

Mediaprint Company Building



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This data volume and complex environment required a new solution so when the IT Staff began looking for a backup utility to coordinate all the data at one location they had, they thought, between 5 and 8 acceptable solution vendors. However, when they began looking at functionality four vendors immediately were crossed of the list for lack of features. Bakbone, ARCserve/Brightstor, BackupExec and Atempo all fell by the wayside.

Then they began the final selection in earnest reviewing four products including SEP sesam on the shortlist. After this extensive review only one software passed all the tests: SEP sesam.

The need for speed, accuracy and security to backup this data was a primary concern when Mediaprint first called on SEP AG. Prior to the new design, the company was only performing decentralized backup of critical data at each remote site.

After final analysis the vote from the 14-member IT Teams was overwhelmingly in favor of SEP sesam, “SEP sesam delivers all the desired functionality we specified for the best price,” reported Marcus Geyer. “In relation to other vendor solutions SEP sesam is easy to install. It’s also intuitive and without expensive training to become acquainted with the overall implementation and capabilities of the software. Further, we specified several requirements that the new software would have to provide. SEP sesam was the only company that met all of the specifications that we had established before beginning our due diligence. Comparing license costs, maintenance and support expense SEP was the clear winner by far over the nearest competition.“

Implementation completed by in-house staff

Since March 2008 all data from 12 multi-node-clusters (two-to-seven servers each) and 50 separate Servers from Mediaprint have been backed up without problem using SEP sesam.

The installation and integration of SEP sesam was completed using only corporate IT staff. This had a significant further positive result on the ROI since none of the calculated expense of using vendor assistance during installation was required. The complete costs for the project came in significantly under budget and the integration of the new backup design was completed in less time than originally budgeted. A significant reason for the positive results was due to the architecture of the

Company

Mediaprint GmbH & Co KG is Austria’s largest publishing house as well as the largest privately held media empire. Among the many publications they are responsible for the daily and weekly delivery include the two leading daily newspapers „Kronen Zeitung“ (Crown News) and „KURIER“ (Courier) as well as many regional dailys like the “Neue Kärntner Tageszeitung“ (New Corinthien Daily).

Prior Situation

Mediaprint had a decentralized data backup and recovery environment that required a great deal of manpower to administer. The desire was to replace this system with a centralized solution.

Solution

Mediaprint uses SEP sesam for centralized administration and backup for 12 two-seven-node-clusters and 50 standalone servers at ten production locations around Austria.

Current Usage and Situation

The conversion to SEP sesam has saved Mediaprint time and money. Using a centralized backup strategy has reduced the administrative overhead by over 65% from 23 to now less than 8 hours per month. In addition, SEP sesam has a lower acquisition expense and support cost than the previous solution.

SEP sesam GUI, “The GUI is well-conceived, uncomplicated and well-designed. Once acquainted with its overall versatility our engineers were able to roll out multiple installations in record time,” said Geyer.

“Almost half of our production systems are running Novell Netware 6.5; the other servers in the organization are running Linux and Windows. SEP sesam is one of the few backup software vendors that provides full NetWare support without requiring a dedicated backup client that must be installed on the respective NetWare Server. This reduced the overhead and expense significantly,” reported Geyer.

“The seamless integration of the other Linux and Microsoft servers, using the same GUI, was an added bonus,” he added.



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One of the most positive results of selecting SEP sesam was the fact that our production systems did not have to be modified. “The backup software integrated seamlessly into our environment. It connected every nuance and feature within our environment. This proved a godsend to our IT department during update and conversion. Further, the planned mothballing of older system weres not required. We were able to test every function within our system, without ever losing time or data,” he stated.

Due to the large volume of production data generated weekly by the combined File, Print and Mail systems and GroupWise Servers the backup takes place on ten distributed systems. Three are in Vienna and a further seven are scattered around the country.

At Location Vienna 23 Mediaprint installed the SEP Master Server. From here the entire backup system for the other 90 servers and the ten (10) further subsidiary locations are managed from the master GUI centrally, both controlled and monitored.

The daily production generates 4 TB of data and it’s backed up to disk and then using Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape technology, it is transferred to the LTO3 tape drives which hold a combined 76 TB of data. In addition, all data volumes are backed up to Vienna on a regular basis using SEP sesam CDP technology.

Additionally, Vienna 7 and Vienna 19 backup likewise 4 TB Disk and 76 TB tape to assure data reliability for the production disk drive arrays. The IT department has further assured company continuity by sharing data between data centers using a “worst case” scenario. Both data centers are mirrored using the enterprise SAN and SEP sesam data shadowing software and in the event of a disaster or system failure the secondary data center can take over the operation of the other data center.

The production data from each Austrian state is transferred over the SAN to Vienna 7 and is synchronized with the data store centrally. This is an additional savings for the company since only 6 TB can be stored on DLT320 tape drives in the field, and this limited storage capacity can be enhanced by backhauling all company vital data to the central office and to one other location to give a secure and reliable data backup.

Administration Overhead Reduced By Almost Two Thirds!

Martin Geyer and his team developed the design and implementation framework for the centralized backup solution. They were able to implement the plan within a set time and within the desired budget. The administrative overhead for IT staff was reduced by over 65% from over 23 hours to under 8 hours per month. In addition, SEP sesam was more cost-effective during

Mediaprint Company Building



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Marcus Geyer, Director IT-INF-Client & Server-Services (left) and Project Director Andreas Gross have saved time and money using SEP sesam.

acquisition, while support and maintenance expenses have been reduced drastically. In fact the maintenance costs for the backup solution proved to be an annualized savings of over 70% of previous expenditures.

The decision to move to SEP sesam has been validated many times over at the Austrian firm and has never been second-guessed by others. “SEP has always provided us with the most professional and extensive support, helping us evaluate the software and providing technical support while we implemented the most complex of technical solutions. They have even helped us work with other software vendors finding errors in their programs and making sure, through their relationships that these vendors, that errors were corrected. This relationship with SEP AG hasn’t slackened since our purchase. SEP personnel are always ready to help us in any way they can, be it with additional software improvements or interfacing with our vendors to assure software reliability and quality,” stated Geyer emphatically.

“The availability of SEP support and engineering along with their unrivaled competence in the backup world continually remind us that the decision we made in March 2008 was the right one. SEP has listened to us over the past year and has improved the deliverable for Mediaprint beyond our expectations. Expectations that we had begun to think were impossible to reach. Other vendors had promised much in the past but had delivered nothing,” said Geyer.

“We recommended several add-on features to the SEP sesam product. Instead of a deaf ear that we received from our previous supplier we were overjoyed with the response from the SEP design team. Most of our recommendations for the GUI were incorporated almost as fast as we brought them to the attention of the SEP team. We often served as the test environment because we were used to the upgraded product being at a level that we could implement without fear. Even when errors were reported the software edits and changes were delivered in a fashion no longer expected in the software world. We weren’t used to this type of service anymore, we thought it didn’t exist,” said Geyer.

Investment protection

Because of system stability Mediaprint would like to continue using the NetWare solution until 2012, however, given the reliability of the SEP sesam solution and the capability of migrating NetWare 6.5 to OES2 with little effort there is a distinct possibility that they will move sooner to the Novell OES2 platform. Using SEP sesam a backup is made to a Linux ‘Data Mover’ and afterward the data is restored to an OES2 server, configured with a mirror of the data structure from the original NetWare server. When this is finished all trustee rights, NSS folders and eDirectories are re-established on the new OES2 server. And this is all without cost since the utility to move from NetWare to OES2 is inherent in the system.



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INFOnlineScalable and Secure Storage and

Backup Architecture

Since its founding in 2002, INFOnline has seen tremendous growth both in terms of the number of websites tracked by its Internet Audience Measurement technology and the volume of data generated by those sites. Everyone in the advertising value chain relies on INFOnline to deliver the right data, meeting the required quality standards at any given time.

“Our services have become mission-critical to the online advertising market in Germany. Very rightly so, our clients expect absolute reliability and 24/7/365 availability of the data that enables their business to thrive,” said Dirk Wippern, managing director of INFOnline GmbH.

Not only do the “user counter” servers produce more than 30 GB of new usage data every day, but there is also an enormous amount of historical data to be processed; a challenge that motivated INFOnline to revisit its data security and backup strategy. “Our key strategic IT challenges are availability, data security, and scalability of our measurement systems,” said Peter van Beek, services manager at INFOnline’s IT services department. “Each month, we have to process more data from more member sites generated by more and more visitors to those sites. That puts great pressure on our server infrastructure based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”

As the need to hold and process more data became evident, INFOnline recognized a need to replace its legacy backup system.

“In 2007, we could see that our legacy backup system, which was merely relying on hard drives attached to servers, wouldn’t be able to store the increasing amount of data much longer,” said van Beek. “In addition, the management of the old data was a cumbersome task and didn’t deliver the level of service our clients expected. We needed a larger, more scalable and reliable backup solution that was easier to manage.”

Solution When planning the new backup and storage system, INFOnline worked with Red Hat Advanced Business Partner dassIT, who had previously set up a monitoring solution for the company. dassIT helped select the right hardware and backup software solutions that would be capable of meetingINFOnline’s requirements.

dassIT designed a multi-tier storage and backup architecture. Tier 1 of the architecture uses mirrored IBM DS 3400 hard-disk storage to store the latest audience measurement data provided by the “counter” servers in 10-minute intervals. Tier 2 consists of a database backup system on an IBM DS 8000 hard-disk storage machine holding 15 TB of production data—the amount of information generated during seven months of audience measurement. In tier 3 of the storage architecture, INFOnline and dassIT created a tape archive with a TS3100 LTO4 tape library designed to store all data for reference purposes.

INFOnline now runs a server infrastructure of 30 Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines on IBM System x and System p hardware, which are divided into task-specific groups. Some handle reporting processes, others are web servers, and the third group of Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines run the new multi-tier backup and replication process.

“Our clients are guaranteed near real-time availability of the audience measurement data via a dedicated web interface. That’s why our online Tier 1 storage needed to be highly available and be able to retrieve the latest analytics information from the counter servers very quickly,” explained Peter van Beek. “In addition, we need to orchestrate several more storage-related processes using SEP sesam.”

At INFOnline, the SEP sesam solution co-ordinates 37 clients running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines, making sure the right data is



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replicated to the correct tier of storage at the right time. The SEP sesam solution provided by SEP, a backup and disaster recovery software company and a Red Hat Advanced ISV Partner, is designed to monitor and manage even the largest multi-client infrastructures.

“In addition to SEP sesam, Red Hat Cluster Suite is a key feature for us because it provides the high availability we need,” said van Beek. “Our two Red Hat Enterprise Linux server clusters sit between Tier 1 and Tier 2 storage, ensuring all scheduled replication jobs actually aggregate the data from the smaller DS 3400 drives to our DS 8000.”

BenefitsWhen planning and designing its new state-of-the-art storage and backup architecture, INFOnline relied on the experience of Red Hat’s partners dassIT and SEP. “With dassIT we have the perfect systems integrator partner on board that fully understands our requirements and regularly comes up with clever ideas for better scaling of our systems. dassIT brought in SEP sesam, which has proven to be a very reliable backup solution that keeps the stream of data moving through our systems like clockwork,” said van Beek.

Deploying the new storage architecture with Red Hat partners also considerably sped up the planning and implementation process. The new system was up and running just three months after the decision was made to implement a multi-tier hard-disk and tape storage system for backup security. “We hired Red Hat Consulting services for two days, in addition to dassIT’s support, to help us set up the Red Hat Global File System cluster,” said van Beek.

As opposed to the very simple old hard-disk backup, INFOnline now runs a fully scalable and highly reliable backup system with fail-over capacities for all mission-critical systems. The IT services team manages the company’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers with Red Hat Network Satellite and is capable of recovering an entire system consisting of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SEP sesam, and a monitoring software within a few hours after failure.

“We’re now well-equipped to add another dimension to our Internet Audience Monitoring,” said van Beek. “As our clients IVW and AGOF plan to add the time spent on a site to the audience metrics, the amount of data generated by our counter servers will be even higher than today. With the advent of mobile Internet usage monitoring and analysing of online video consumption on IVW and AGOF member websites, we expect the growth of data volumes to be exponential rather than linear moving forward.”

Business Challenge

Build a new, enterprise-grade, multi-tier storage and backup architecture to ensure high availability and data security for continuous Internet Audience Measurement of more than 1,300 leading German news and entertainment websites

Migration Path

INFOnline moved from a simple legacy hard-disk backup solution to a multi-tier storage infrastructure with clustered fail-over capacities based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SEP sesam on IBM System x and System p servers, as well as various IBM storage hardware

Software

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Cluster Suite, Red Hat Network Satellite, SEP sesam, Nagios Groundwork (for monitoring), Red Hat Consulting, Red Hat Global File System

Benefits

Achieved a scalable and highly reliable storage and backup system capable of handling an increasing amount of usage data of currently more than 30 GB daily from a growing number of websites monitored by INFOnline

“The combination of Red Hat

Enterprise Linux with SEP sesam

backup management is extremely

stable and reliable. It gives our IT

services team peace of mind.” – Peter van Beek, IT services manager, INFOnline GmbH



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Space Research Institute

SEP sesam Reduced Backup Time from Four Days to Four Hours

After using SEP sesam sucessfully in the Novell Netware and Open Enterprise Server infrastructure for two years, the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research decided to move their entire backup software to SEP sesam.

SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research is the Dutch national center of expertise for the development and exploitation of satellite instruments in astrophysics and earth system science. It acts as the Dutch national agency for space research and as the national point of contact for ESA programs. The institute develops and uses innovative technology for ground breaking research in space, focusing on astrophysical research, earth science and planetary research.

The institute has about 250 staff who are employed at a support department and five divisions: high-energy astrophysics, low-energy astrophysics, earth observation, sensor development and engineering. Together they form a unique melting pot of top scientists and technologists who inspire each other to perform at their absolute best. This approach has enabled SRON to develop into a national expertise institute of global repute.

Open Enterprise Server Was The Starting Point

SRON is using a large distributed IT environment with data centers in Utrecht and Groningen that includes Novell Netware,

Open Enterprise Servers, Linux and Microsoft Windows Servers. The complete IT infrastructure in Utrecht includes about 35 servers and 200 clients. In the past, the Novell and the Linux/Windows infrastructure has been backed up separately with two backup solutions.

When SRON decided to move their Novell Netware servers in Utrecht to Open Enterprise Server in 2008, they needed to look for a new backup software since their existing solution was not supporting Open Enterprise Server. The institute evaluated Syncsort and Yosemite from Barracuda. Yosemite was used at that time in the Linux/Windows section of the institute, however Yosemite was not supporting Novell Open Enterprise Server either. This was not an option. “We went for SEP sesam. The software demonstrated a comprehensive feature set and an intuitive user interface – all at a compelling price,“ said Bert van den Bovenkamp, Administrator for Netware and Open Enterprise Server. “And we never regretted the decision.“

Four Days For A Full backup

The Yosemite backup of the Windows and Linux was giving more and more problems. For example, it took two to three days to do a full backup of the home directories of all Linux users at the institute in Utrecht, with 1.5 TB of data and millions of files. In addition, the backup database regularly collapsed and successful restore was not guaranteed. More importantly, the central data



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backup server that stores the relevant information gathered from missions had a volume of 22 TB. Because of the amount of data, a full back up had to be split into four weekends.

At this point, Frank Uittenbosch, Administrator for the Linux infrastructure started to shop around for an alternative backup solution. “Most manufacturers would tell me that we need to invest in new and more powerful hardware to master the challenge with the huge number of files in the Utrecht home server,“ explained Frank Uittenbosch

Keeping in mind that SRON has a Novell infrastructure, they have had great experiences using SEP sesam. Frank Uittenbosch experimented to backup the central data server with the existing hardware components using SEP sesam: “The results were astonishing! SEP sesam was able to do a full backup within three to four hours, where it took us up to four days to get that done with our existing solution – on exactly the same hardware!“

The reason for the significant reduction of the backup time is in the Multiple Stream concept of SEP. SEP sesam is able to leverage it’s true multi-streaming technology to offer unparalleled performance and a reduction of backup windows usually between 30 - 85%. Other companies advertise muti-streaming capabilities and to some extent, they can transfer more than one stream of data at a time. The difference is that they only send one stream to each media at a time. Having five single streams going to five media devices is not true multi-streaming.

SEP sesam Server is able to simultaneously write many streams to the same media at the same time. Thus drastically increasing performance and reduce backup times. SRON defined 16 parallel backup streams to do a full backup of their central data server on tape. The 16 data streams ensure that data will be written at full speed to the tape.

Moreover, the transparency and managebility of SEP sesam was demostrated and proven to SRON’s IT experts. At any given time,they were able to see the status of their various backup tasks. Using the SEP sesam command line interface, they could easily integrate SEP sesam in their existing monitoring and management tools. Using the command line, it was faster and more convenient for the administrators at SRON to start a backup or do a single file restore.

Customer

SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research is the national center of expertise for the development and exploitation of satellite instruments for astrophysical and earth-oriented research. The institute acts as the Dutch national agency for space research and as the national point of contact for the scientific ESA programs. SRON is part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). For more information, please visit www.sron.nl

Initial Situation

The Windows and Linux department of SRON’s datacenter in Utrecht was looking for a new backup software that could handle the huge amount of data and the huge number of files in their central data server.

Solution

SEP sesam replaced the existing backup solution Yosemite from Barracuda in the Windows and Linux department of the SRON data center in Utrecht. Quality of service improved significantly with SEP sesam.

Benefit

The data center now has consistent full backups available of their business-crtitical central data server every week. Backup time was reduced from days to hours – without investing in new hardware.

SRON has been using SEP sesam since February 2011 to back up their complete heterogeneous server infrastructure with 35 severs, including a huge variety of operating systems and databases. Because SEP has been gaining recognition as the premier backup software in the industry, SRON is now considering to move their second data center in Groningen to SEP sesam as well.



18

Grand Bank & Trust of Florida

Choosing the right backup and archiving solutions were critical

Banking on SEP sesam and GWAVA Retain

Grand Bank & Trust, a 12-year old community banking organization in the Palm Beach and Treasure Coast area of Florida, takes security very seriously. Choosing the right backup and archiving solutions were critical. Grand Bank & Trust of Florida chose SEP sesam and Retain from GWAVA for archiving after giving their previous solutions the boot.

“When we came upon SEP sesam, it seemed to not only fit all the requirements, but it also had additional functionality that we had given up hope of finding and SEP has the best support really of any vendor we deal with” explains Paul Rudin, Bank Officer and Network Administrator for Grand Bank & Trust of Florida. “Being a bank we might as well put a target sign on our network. It is a constant issue for us, and we take it very seriously. We back up our email nightly. All of our backups are written to tape or disk. These backups are encrypted in case one of our tapes manages to get misplaced.”

“The software was so easy to

install compared to our last

solution I had to call SEP to

make sure everything was

really installed correctly.”



19

SEP and GWAVA Working Together

“SEP and GWAVA together have allowed us to migrate to a strictly Linux-based ecosystem, lowering our costs. GWAVA has allowed us to lower our data footprint for our archive solution, which allows us to drastically change our backup solution for backing up our archive server. SEP has given us a product that allows us unparalleled options for how we backup all of our data. This has allowed us to reduce management overhead across the board, and since these are two of our most important functions, it has been imperative that they work well together. SEP is very adaptable to our changing needs as well.” says Paul Rudin.

SEP sesam & GWAVA Retain - Worth the Investment

When asked if SEP sesam and GWAVA Retain were worth the investment made by Grand Bank & Trust, Paul Rudin had this to say about each product:

“SEP sesam has performed up to and beyond our expectations easing the workload and providing a quality backup solution. The new solution has enabled us to provide an extra level of security in our backup design scheme. The time we spend working on backup related issues has shrunk by about 90%.”

“GWAVA Retain provides us exactly what we need. The investment has already paid for itself in the 500 GB reduction in space on our SAN. We were nearing capacity on the SAN. And that is a huge amount for an organization our size. Plus, our users now have 100% access. It has really reduced the amount of time IT has had to spend doing email discovery. It’s much easier to search the system for a formal discovery as well.”

Situation

An older backup software solution was creating a problem since company policy required a full backup of eight remote locations to tape. The overhead in time and complexity of running the backup for the remote locations and headquarters pushed Grand Bank to seek a new solution; one that could backup their legacy applications as well as run on Novell’s newest OES2.

Solution

“We made the decision in early summer to implement the switch and with very little help from SEP engineers, we were stunned at how easy the installation was performed as well as setting up our desired backup strategy,” Mr. Rudin continues, “My colleague, Bill Haines, actually called our representative at SEP Software, Lanai Bayne, and asked him if there was something wrong. Usually adding agents with our old product and performing the first backup took hours. With SEP sesam, it was just minutes. We are now a great fan of the software and the team at SEP. ”

Benefit

“SEP sesam has performed up to and beyond our expectations easing the workload and providing a quality backup solution. The new solution has enabled us to provide an extra level of security in our backup design scheme. The time we spend working on backup related issues has shrunk by about 90%,” Rudin attests.



20

Catholic SchoolsOffice Lismore

Forty Six Lismore CSO Schools backup with SEP sesam

The Challenge

As the regional school network grew the administrators found that the backup facilities had not kept pace resulting in a patchwork of backup systems that were unreliable and hard to manage, thus putting the IT resources and critical data at schools and the Catholic Schools Office (CSO) HQ at risk. Each school site ran a standalone backup product, monitoring of the backup was done at the school level and prone to error. The restore of data was often delayed until technical support could get onsite.

The CSO was also planning to roll out updated server technology based on virtualisation which created additional backup challenges but also provided an ideal opportunity to solve the backup problem in an integrated way.

The new platform was based on Novell Open Enterprise Server Release 2 (OES2), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES10), Windows Server 2008 and VMware ESX5 virtualisation.

The regional network contains 46 campuses and is spread over a rural area of over 28,000 square kilometres, an area comparable to some European countries such as The Netherlands and Belgium. The wide area data connections available are not universally high speed or high reliability, the connections range from 2mb to 10mb, which means that it was impractical to transfer backup data across the network and it must be stored at the schools. This dictated a distributed backup solution based on tape storage devices at each school. The control and management of remote backups then became a key requirement as it had to be low bandwidth and robust enough to work reliably on unreliable network links.

It also proved desirable to upgrade the CSO head office backup architecture using the same technology to maximise consistency. There were also some existing backup problems that had to be solved for specific sites urgently before the updated server technology roll out would start.



21

The Solution

Initially the CSO rolled out a small number of SEP sesam ONE installations to specific sites to solve the existing urgent issues. This proved the SEP sesam backup technology in the field and allowed the CSO team to gain experience with the SEP sesam solution.

When the updated server technology roll-out started, the CSO was able to migrate the existing SEP sesam ONE installations into the full solution architecture. This is based on the SEP Master GUI plus SEP sesam ONE and the SEP sesam Remote Device Server at each site, depending on the exact needs at each site. The SEP Master GUI provides a central point of graphical backup management for the entire network.

“After a brief learning curve with SEP sesam, we were able to solve our existing backup problems quickly and with minimal cost compared to other solutions” states Mick Howell, the Diocesan Learning Technology Officer.

The Results

The Diocese of Lismore CSO was able to solve their existing urgent problems and then build on the initial experience to a fully integrated distributed backup solution that is robust enough to work with imperfect rural communications networks across 46 sites. Being able to backup all their key systems in a consistent and manageable way means that they can focus their energy on delivering improved services to the school community.

“We calculated that the CSO will save considerably by moving to SEP sesam backup software. The acquisition cost is much lower than other products we researched and the ongoing maintenance cost is even less,” according to Mr Howell. “Added to the simplicity and ease of use of SEP sesam, the CSO will continue to benefit from the new backup software platform for years to come. Fewer administrative resources are required and several regional staff have been trained to provide oversight for the backup processes,” stated Howell.

About Catholic Schools Office Lismore

The Diocese of Lismore extends from Tweed Heads to Laurieton and west to the foothills of the Great Divide. The region has an agricultural, service industry, tourist based economy and continues to experience significant growth. The Catholic education system currently includes thirty four primary schools with an enrolment of approximately 9,100, eleven systemic secondary schools with an enrolment of approximately 7,700. There is also one non-systemic school with a further approximately 1,300 students at secondary level, giving a total of approximately 17,700 pupils attending Catholic schools. All forty six schools are co-educational. Total school staff exceeds 1,300.

“As with any complex system there have been a number of technical hurdles to overcome during the implementation and we appreciated the dedicated support of the ANZ distributor (Custom Technology) in resolving them,” said Mick Howell (Diocesan Learning Technology Officer).

www.CustomTech.com.au


SEP Software Corp.

4001 Discovery Drive Suite 260 Boulder, CO 80303 USA Phone +1-303-449-0100 http://www.sepsoftware.com

SEP AG

Ziegelstrasse 1 83629 Weyarn Germany Phone +49 8020 180 0 Fax +49 8020 180 666 http://www.sep.de

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About SEP SEP sesam is an enterprise backup, restore and disaster recovery solution for today’s discerning computer environments. Deduplication and replication capabilities across distributed locations - as well as archiving - are key features of SEP sesam. Migration of data is scheduled automatically, regardless of storage technologies. The flexible backup and recovery of all common operating systems, virtual environments and hypervisors along with a multitude of applications and databases is realized absolutely reliable in over 50 countries.

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