Cramer Rosenthal McGlynn, LLC, New York, N.Y. makes its money by
providing investing, tax ramification and estate planning advice to
families, and managing tax-exempt portfolios for pension and hedge
funds, endowments and foundations. Ironically, the firm needed an
outsider's financial insight to solve its data backup problem.
The company, which has approximately 55 employees, was having trouble
coordinating data backups between its New York City and suburban
White Plains offices. "We were using different versions of backup
software, so I was concerned about our ability to quickly provide
accurate, up-to-date information, if a problem arose," said Maury
Myar, chief technology officer and principal at the firm, which has
been in business since 1973.
The financial services corporation relies mainly on the Windows 2000
operating system to support the primary applications, Microsoft's SQL
Server, Lotus Notes and Citrix Systems Inc. application sharing
system. The company also uses a Unix-based, legacy IBM accounting
system.
Cramer Rosenthal McGlynn had used Computer Associates ArcServe system
to back up its servers for more than a decade. One problem was the
firm had to rely on manual techniques to select and secure each tape.
While the financial services supplier had IT professionals at the
White Plains office, the task of managing the DLTtape drives often
fell to non-IT personnel, who sometimes did not know how to perform
such tasks.
Also, Cramer Rosenthal McGlynn's disaster recovery plan was
primitive. At week's end, the company would run full backups at each
location. A courier then physically transported the tapes between the
two locations, thus, providing a measure of geographical safety. Yet,
the two sites were working with different versions of the ArcServe
software during the week. "If we did have to completely restore our
data, it would have been a time consuming, demanding process, one
requiring a number of conversion steps," said Myar.
Although Myar was not satisfied with the approach, he didn't see any
options. "I thought that a tape library system would be too
expensive, costing say $50,000 or more, for an organization of our
size," he explained.
In the fall of 2001, he attended a focus group presentation sponsored
by Quantum Corp. a Milpitas, Calif.-based vendor who supplied Cramer
Rosenthal McGlynn's tape drives. When Myers discovered that a 16-tape
backup unit was priced in the $5,000 to $10,000 range, he began
exploring that option and did some research into backup software and
hardware.
After perusing the market, Cramer Rosenthal McGlynn selected Backup
Exec from Veritas Software Corp., Mountain View, Calif. because it
was compatible with a wide range of systems and simple to use.
Quantum's ATLSuperloader was chosen because it offered a long-term
migration path. The system now works with DLT1 drives but is
compatible with SDLT drives, which offer twice as much capacity (5T
bytes) and faster transmission rates, up to 115GB/hour.
In February 2002, Cramer Rosenthal McGlynn began migrating from its
ArcServe system to the new backup system. First, the company
installed the Veritas software and a few months later the Quantum
hardware followed. "The installation went much smoother than
expected; we had a few software glitches with the Veritas system but
we quickly cleared them up," said Myar.
The changes have made the firm's backup system more automated via
tools like Quantum's remote management functions. The product's
browser-based interface makes it simple for technicians to perform
functions, such as loading or unloading new tapes. As a result, IT
professionals at the firm's New York office now complete the backups
for both locations. The company backs up select information during
the day (using two 1.5Mbps connections to transport the information
between the sites) and completes a full backup for all applications
(approximately 100G bytes) on the weekends. Since the two locations
are in synch, the company feels more comfortable about its disaster
recovery plans.
Myar expects the new system to eventually help the company ensure
important information is on file. Currently, the firm relies on Lotus
Notes' replication features to periodically make copies of important
information. The financial services firm has searched for similar
functions with Microsoft SQL but has not found them. Eventually, the
firm expects to use its backup system to periodically make copies of
the database information. "The replication functions are something we
expect Quantum to make available with its product in the next 12
months or so," he explained.
So far, Myar is happy that he went to an outsider for some advice
about its backup system. "We thought pricing for a tape library
system would be out of our league, but it turned out to be right in
our ballpark," he said.
For more information on Quantum, visit its Web site.
Additional information on Cramer Rosenthal McGlynn, LLC can be
located here.
Paul Korzeniowski is a freelance writer in Sudbury, Mass. and
specializes in networking issues. His e-mail address is
paulkorzen@aol.com.
