The University of Louisville is a state-supported research university with a student population in excess of 22,000 and is located in Kentucky’s largest metropolitan area. UofL focuses on teaching, research, and service to its community and the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the advancement of educational opportunity for all. Their academic programs attract students from every state and from all over the world.

Challenge

University of Louisville requested proposals to establish a multi-year technology partnership to completely redesign and re-implement the University’s backup, recovery, and disaster recovery (DR) systems. They needed to transform their existing tape-based backup, recovery and DR workows into an as a service model.

The university’s IT staff expended a great deal of energy manually testing their DR environment. At that time, their DR provider was located in the Northeast at a facility that was only available as a colocation site. Certain on-demand resources were available, and could be requested for annual testing. In-house responsibility for disaster recovery was becoming an inefficient process that was costing them too much time and money. The university desired a true DR partnership, not just rack space at another facility. An as-a-service model would provide freedom to focus on production while still feeling safe and prepared.

Solution

  • Relocate their systems from their previous disaster recovery provider to Recovery Point in Maryland. Recovery Point began business under First Federal Corporation in 1982 and has provided secure services to the Federal government since 1984. Became an independent privately held corporation in 1998, with 6 geographically dispersed facilities and 175,000 square feet of recovery and data storage resources.
  • Facilitate the installation of their systems at Recovery Point and restructure their virtualized backup environment. UofL had backup and recovery consisting of an AIX based IBM Spectrum Protect (formerly Tivoli Storage Manager) system which stored data in both an IBM ProtecTIER virtual tape library and disk-based storage pools.
  • Transform a critical infrastructure component from a capital purchase to an operational spend.

Results

  • Volta’s services team efficiently relocated all of UofL’s systems, which were back up and running within 24 hours, and facilitated the installation of the new environment at Recovery Point by making sure there was a dedicated circuit for UofL’s data between the two sites. Without the physical transition to handle, the university’s IT staff could remain focused on their most important, productive tasks.
  • Capital Continuity’s Business Information Protection (BIPs) software was installed to protect and recover AIX workloads. Upon a disaster declaration, virtually any size AIX LPAR, with any amount of compute and storage, can be back in service in less than 15 minutes. BIPs automates the processes of building the recovery LPARs to match their original configurations and automatically IPL’s all systems.
  • Installed Veeam Cloud Connect for their VMware environment. Veeam Cloud Connect uses Veeam Enterprise Plus Availability Suite to allow clients to back-up their data to the cloud and quickly resume business operations following any disruption to their IT environment.
  • The university’s backup and recovery workflows successfully transitioned into a DR as-a-service model overseen by Volta and Recovery Point. UofL no longer has to worry about whether their equipment is up-to-date, fully refreshed and ready to go. They can focus on their most vital projects and maintain peace of mind that their DR strategy is in place and in good hands.

Volta’s growth and success is a testament to their innovative and caring approach to business. I thank them for all of the work they have done for me and my company over the years.

Volta Customer Reference

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