UPPER MARLBORO, Md. – No one at NASA Federal Credit Union needs to worry now about backup tapes being eaten by the dog or destroyed by dropping them down the stairs. Those are just some of the stories that Richard Heitmann has heard in his role as vice president of product marketing for EVault Inc., a provider of online and onsite data protection services to about 150 credit unions, including $746 million NASA FCU.
"Even some fairly sophisticated organizations are still using tape out there, and these are the kinds of things you hear happen," Heitmann says. "But the transition to online disk-to-disk protection has begun."
That's what's happening at NASA FCU, which has licensed EVault's InfoStage online backup system as an in-house solution. Now more than a terabyte of data-including member information, payroll and e-mail server records-is backed up daily and mission-critical SQL server databases are backed up hourly.
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The new system replaces one which required the CU to label and transport eight backup tapes to backup locations, a process that required about two hours of time each day and involved several IT administrators.
"It was a labor-intensive process to keep those tapes in order, and while the information being shuttled back and forth in a locked box was secured, it was not encrypted," says Tim Burch, vice president of technology services at 64,000-member NASA FCU.
The records now are sent through secure online channels to the credit union's Columbia branch about 30 miles away from the CU's headquarters and to one of EVault's eight data centers scattered across the country, including at its home office in Emeryville, Calif.
There the data rests in encrypted form, an added layer of security, and is accessible for both routine and disaster recovery reasons, Heitmann says. He says the process is quick and relatively easy, requiring just a few clicks of the mouse, and is hastened along by such techniques as having the system transmit only files that have been changed, in many cases, instead of entire databases. Data compression also is a key to fast backup. EVault's system retains file compression throughout the process, which the company says optimizes bandwidth usage and reduces client storage costs. "A big part of our decision was how fast our backups would travel to our hot site, and we didn't want to spend a lot of money increasing our bandwidth to reach branch offices as we moved to online backup," says Burch at NASA FCU.
"We also have increasing regulation attached to protecting member data, and beyond just backing up the data electronically, we needed a solution that would provide encryption for information stored off-site," he says.
EVault's solutions do that and are increasingly forming a backbone for backup solutions that go beyond simply safe storage, says Heitmann, the company's marketing chief.
"You always hear about tapes getting lost, and that's one reason for going with this kind of system," he says. "But as organizations are becoming more educated, they become more interested in efficiency, and in disaster recovery instead of simply file recovery. "That's why we offer a data-management plan that includes our electronic vaults as well as disaster-recovery and continuity planning. We're seeing a real increase in demand in that area." Heitmann sees the market continuing to evolve. "The features-and-functions wars are not over," he says. "These systems need to continue getting easier to use, more automated, more reliable and more secure. Our customers are becoming more savvy and starting to ask for a lot more things, and that's good. It validates the market and the trends we're seeing." -
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