LANSING, Mich. — Backing up Outlook and the intranet is getting the same level of attention these days as protecting the records of daily transactions at Lansing Automakers Federal Credit Union.
A Symitar client, LAFCU counts on its tech CUSO–Member Driven Technologies–for processing, storing and backing up core transactions.
Meanwhile, several types of backing up have been used internally to protect the functions performed through the $470 million CU's Microsoft Exchange server system–the backbone of such collaborative processes as e-mail, calendars, meeting-room management, the CU's heavily used intranet and its IP phone system from Cisco.
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So, facing questions of physical and disk space and business continuity, CIO Brian Wixson and his team called on storage specialists from CDW, a Fortune 500 company perhaps best known in consumer circles for online sales of computers and other tech tools to government and business, to help design and deploy a new LeftHand iSCSI storage area network (SAN) at the Lansing credit union.
The CU now is in the process of also preparing a disaster-recovery site at a new branch in Eaton Rapids to replicate data from the SAN on a real-time basis using VMwareVirtual Infrastructure tools.
The combined SAN and virtualization solution will enable server consolidation and provide for easier physical management of the credit union's network as well as provide backup.
The SAN came first, installed last year as what Wixson called "a long-term solution to a shortterm problem."
"Disk space," he said. "Our need for it is growing because of systems that take up a great deal of disk space, mostly at first from our marketing department. We also wanted to be able to do backups easily, and we needed scalability."
The LeftHand system starts off with three terabytes and then allows one-terabyte of disk space to be added at a time as needed. And because the system is a storage network across three servers, a failure or scheduled down time on one server simply slows down processing while repairs are made, instead of bringing operations to a screeching halt.
The SAN has been in place for about a year. To facilitate backups, testing is now under way on the virtualization system, which takes "snapshots" of Exchange server activity at designated points day and night.
"Our long-term plan is to install a second SAN in our disaster recovery site and run the virtualization software at both sites, so we can have all that throughput ability from several systems in a setup that's both balanced and backed up," Wixson says.
Space limitations, the demands of a system that could handle "150 to 160 people pounding on it," and business continuity all played into Wixson's reasoning that such versatile, scalable technology was needed to ensure service in the face of all potential, conceivable obstacles.
The fact that Wixson's arguments were persuasive to his board would be no surprise to CDW managers.
"Corporate executives are realizing what IT departments have known for years," says Firooz Ghanbarzadeh, director of technology services and solutions at CDW in Vernon Hills, Ill. "Organizations failing to plan for business disruptions are
planning to fail.
"As a result, keeping the operation running during natural or manmade disruptions–from snow to power outages to homeland security events–is moving to the top of the business priority list, and that's apparent every day in our conversations with our customers."
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