Staff get databack just hoursafter fire guts TheAcademy, SelseyRedstor to the rescue after disaster strikes

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Blaze destroysserver roomRedstor restores 100% of school’s data

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Redstor came to the rescue,restoring all of the staff and pupils’data after fire ripped through TheAcademy, Selsey, destroying 80per cent of the school.

Head teacher Tom Garfield said: “The ability todownload our electronic infrastructure offsiteand restore that was absolutely critical becausethere were enough challenges from a teachingand learning point of view without having torecreate every resource.”

The fire started as a result of roofing work in thesummer holidays - 10 days before Tom was dueto take over as the new head teacher.

He said: “I was phoned and told there was anissue on the roof that had been resolved.Halfway to school it was clear from theenormous plume of smoke that wasn’t the case.”

Strong winds had blown embers on to adjacentbuildings, causing the fire to spread quickly andTom said: “I arrived to find the school ablaze. Welost 80 per cent of the buildings.”

The disaster recovery service wereceived from Redstor totallyexceeded our expectations."Tom Garfield, Head Teacher

Redstor’s InstantData™ technology enablesorganisations to access files and theinformation they need immediately in theevent of a disaster.

In the event that live data is lost, InstantData™serves it up from the cloud on demand, and withminimal effort from the user.

Daniel Sapseid, the ICT Systems Manager,was contacted on the evening of the fireand within two hours, using a high-speedbroadband connection, he was able torestore all the critical student and staffdata that had been backed up by Redstor.

All less critical data was restored in an additionaleight to ten hours. The only reason it wasn’tfaster was a low-speed USB external hard-drivewas used for part of the restore process.

Daniel said: “A member of the Redstor teamvisited us onsite and assisted us with a fullrestore which made the process a lot smoother.”

Eliminatingdowntime

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Daniel Sapseid, ICT Systems Manager, said: “Idon’t even want to think about what theimplications would have been, had we not beenable to get the data back – it may well have beenmy head on the chopping block.

“Redstor were amazing in supporting with therestore of the data. They sent one of their leadengineers down to help support with the restore.Once I got the new hardware on site, the firstserver was restored within the hour.

“That meant I could then provision all the extraservers that I needed to prepare for the restore ofall the other servers – and start to give the databack to the senior team with the contact detailsfor the staff and students. The school’s staffwere thrilled that they didn’t lose any work at allfrom the network.”

Unlike other disaster recovery solutions, there’sno need to restore all of an organisation’s datafrom Redstor before anyone can beginoperating again.

With InstantData™ the most critical files, theones users need to access first, can bestreamed immediately and on demand –allowing everyone to continue workingseamlessly on any device.

Importantly, while staff work on these files, theremaining data will be intelligently restored inthe background. So downtime and disruptionare no longer an issue.

InstantData™ restores the files thatthe users ask for first, so it willeliminate the downtime and staffhave access to the stuff that theywant almost instantly."

Daniel Sapseid, ICT Systems Manager

“If there was to be another catastrophe here inthe school, I fully expect to be able to have thedata streamed back live to me - and have mystaff using data pretty much immediately.”

Redstor enables organisations torecover physical, virtual or cloud-hosted machines to VMware orHyper-V in just a few clicks andkeep on working.

Recovering student and staff data after fireguts 80 per cent of schoolKeeping school working while data isrecoveredHigh management overheads associated withmanaging dataDifficulty finding expert support

A data management solution that deliversreliable backup and recovery, archiving,disaster recovery and global searchInstantData™, Redstor’s unique on-demandstreaming technologyIntelligent, policy-driven automation andsophisticated reporting with a centralisedmanagement console, offering borderlessvisibility of entire, complex data estate at anytime, on any deviceSupport provided by an organisation that isboth the technology vendor and infrastructureowner

Stream data in real time to any device, makingdowntime a thing of the pastNo need to wait for full recovery - gainimmediate access to automated, encryptedand secure online backup and recoveryTime spent on data management every weekreduced from several hours to less than 20minutesFast 24/7/365 access to a support team thatdraws on 20 years’ knowledge and experiencewithin the storage and backup industry

Challenges Solution Key Benefits

Complete datamanagement

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With a unique solution that ismulti-tenanted and built for thecloud, The Kemnal AcademiesTrust are able to discover, manage,control and protect the data ofmultiple schools with ease.

Redstor unifies backup, instant-data recoveryand access, archiving, search and data migrationthrough a secure, central console, enablingborderless visibility of TKAT’s entire data estateat any time, on any device.

Daniel said: “Prior to moving to Redstor for mybackups, I was using a standard disc-to-disc-to-tape scenario.

“TKAT have a relationship with Redstor and theyadvised me to see the product in action. I likedwhat I saw and the school’s data was migratedto Redstor a year before the fire. When the firehappened it fully vindicated that decision.”

Running on servers, laptops and workstations,with backup selections profiled from themanagement console, Redstor provides rapidand granular restore for Office 365 and SaaS

and granular restore for Office 365 and SaaSapplications. Multiple copies of backups are heldsecurely encrypted in UK data centres. Theencryption key is set by the customer, ensuringno unauthorised access.

A liberated IT team

Deployed and configured in 15 minutes, Redstorhas made data management tasks smaller andsimpler for Daniel and the school he supports.

He said: “Here at the Academy Selsey we haveabout 2TB worth of data on the Redstor platformthat’s backed up every evening.

“Previously I used to spend a couple of hours aweek on average, managing failures andchanging tapes. I would often leave the backupprocess to complete over the weekend and thenwould take the tapes home with me. Lookingback, I see it wasn’t the most efficient way tostore critical student data as a large part of mytime was spent ensuring the backups had beencompleted in the first place.

The day-to-day management of the Redstorsoftware requires next to no input at all. I get anemail every morning with a summary of all myservers with how much data has been backed upand whether there was an issue.

How quickly after invoking a DR planwould you actually have access tobusiness-critical data?

SEE RESULTS

In minutes?

In an hour?

In less than two hours?

In half a day?

By the next day?

Within two days?

I can check into logs and investigatefurther to solve any issue, but it’sreduced my management backuptime drastically – to 20 minutes perweek – tops.

I get emails every morning to saythat my backups have successfullycompleted.

So when I got a phone call from thehead teacher on the evening of thefire, asking me about the location ofour data, I was confident in theknowledge that it was all backed upwith Redstor the night before."

Daniel Sapseid

Transparent andpredictablepricing

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As well as removing manual overheads, Redstorallows TKAT to budget confidently with a pricingmodel that is subscription-based, simple andpredictable.

TKAT can now scale up or down as demandchanges. There are no hidden costs, nosurprises.

Daniel said: “The pricing model that the Redstorplatform uses - where you buy for the space thatyou use rather than per device - means I canhave multiple servers backing up.

“The pricing, compared to alternative providers, Ithink is really reasonable and I wouldn’t lookanywhere else going forward.”

Not only are traditional backupscostly, complicated and time-consuming, they cannot scale tosupport the explosion in new appsand growing data sets.

How quickly would yourorganisation NEED to be up andrunning in the event of acatastrophic disaster?

SEE RESULTS

In minutes?

In an hour?

In less than two hours?

In half a day?

By the next day?

Within two days?

Expert support

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Expert support

Redstor’s clients have 24/7 access to a supportteam that draws on 20 years’ knowledge andexperience within the storage and backupindustry.

If Daniel ever needs support or the answer to aquery, he has the reassurance that he is speakingto an organisation that is both the technologyvendor and infrastructure owner.

Redstor also feeds all inputdirectly into softwaredevelopment. That’s why thesoftware is constantlyimproving in the way clientsdesire.

Straight after the fire, once I got my internet connection back up and runningonto the new servers, I spoke with the Redstor technical team and my accountmanagers and they ensured that all my backups were working successfullyagain.

“It took a number of months for our leased line to be re-established. During thattime I had a satellite broadband connection piggy-backing off one of our localstatic caravan sites. The connection on that broadband was not as good aswhat I was used to, but the backups still ran as I would have fully expected.Same time frames – with no issues. From thereon I’ve had constant contactwith my account managers to make sure that I’m happy with the product goingforward.”"

Daniel Sapseid

Proven and trusted tech

Redstor is trusted by more than 40,000 clientsaround the world to help discover, analyse,control and protect their critical data.

I would fully recommend the Redstorproduct to any school or business outthere for their data management andrecovery.

"Redstor as a company havesupported the school and myselfthroughout. All of their staff are verypersonable and approachable – and Ijust cannot recommend the producthighly enough.”

Daniel Sapseid

Head teacher Tom Garfield added: “Having been through that level of catastrophe, I think we are safe inthe knowledge that we can bring more things into a digital storage solution and be more protected.

“We are moving away from paper storage files for student records and actually moving into an areawhere they are digitally stored.

“We now appreciate that the service that Redstor is able to offer is so secure and so comprehensivethat there is no risk, whereas a hard-copy filing system just presents the opportunity for things like thefire to decimate those key areas that we need.“So we are expanding our use of what Redstor is able tooffer.”

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Selsey AcademyCase Study

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