Providing affordable, reliable backup and recovery for Cancer Research UK
Cancer Research UK’s (CRUK) IT infrastructure is critical in safeguarding supporter data, scientific research, and mission-critical applications. Their data cannot be compromised.
The Challenge
CRUK had high backup costs from its incumbent managed service provider and needed a private cloud strategy, requiring a VMware-compatible backup solution so they could back up virtual machines as well as physical servers and provide deduplication.
CAE deployed Data Domain at CRUK’s two data centres (50 miles apart). The first data centre stores vital operating data, runs mission-critical applications, and supports 1200 thin client terminals. The second provides disaster recovery capabilities. A third external centre supports CRUK’s customer-facing, website-related data.
The Outcome
CRUK now has substantially lower backup costs (with a break even point within 18 months). The charity has accurate backups of block and file data, virtual machines, and mission critical applications and has the capability to back up all mission-critical applications and data, as well as testing and development data, with a very small footprint.
CRUK needs high rates of data de-duplication to cost effectively replicate data between data centres for disaster recovery. They’ve achieved an average compression ratio of 9.6 times — so can transfer data between the data centres located 50 miles apart over an existing one GB IP pipe, that’s not bandwidth intensive.
Data Domain de-duplication also minimises backup windows at CRUK. CRUK can confidently back up within its overnight window without the concern of backups running into the next business day.
