Event Information:

• Tue

  01

  Apr

  2014

  MCR Safety

  MCR Safety

  The Challenge

  :

  MCR’s IT team supports the computing needs of over 350 employees at their headquarters in Collierville, TN, manufacturing facility in Glenwood, AR, and two distribution centers across the U.S. MCR has migrated the majority of their servers to virtual environments, which power their business applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL and file servers. They have AIX systems running DB2 to power their mission critical SAP ERP system that runs their sale s, purchasing, accounting,

  manufacturing, quality, warehousing, and distribution operations. When the MCR Safety team decided to move their data center, they opted to upgrade their backup and disaster recovery to address both their current and future needs.

   

  There are consequences when data is lost, most of which revolve around revenue.For MCR, the pain of downtime extends beyond potential revenue. There is also the immeasurable cost of customer satisfaction and loyalty being tarnished by having to call customers to go over orders and explain reasons for delays an unacceptable option given the high level of MCR’s customer service standards.In an effort to minimize the risk of data loss, MCR would run backups of critical

  systems frequently throughout the day, but doing so presented challenges. “The issue with our former solution was the frequency of backups that we wanted to take,the size of the email stores, and the change rate on the file servers. We encountered numerous issues with timing and getting backups to complete quickly. This was also taxing to our infrastructure causing storage I/O and network latency,” said Michael Cantkier, System Engineer at MCR Safety. Prior to joining MCR, Michael was an IT consultant for a technology Value Added Reseller and had firsthand knowledge of how InMage could provide the most robust solution to meet their requirements. “Before accepting my position at MCR Safety, I worked as a consultant and they were my client. I sold them the InMage product and was instrumental in its installation. It is extremely rewarding as I actually got to ‘build the house’ I live in

   

   

  The Solution: Meeting the Needs of Today and Tomorrow.

  MCR Safety had to address both short term and long term goals

  when selecting a new backup and disaster recovery solution. Theirshort term need was to replace their former backup solution with a scalable product that would give them continuous data protection,would work effortlessly with AIX and VMware, and would give them the freedom to evo

  lve as their needs change. In the future, they’ll have a Disaster Recovery site and use InMage protection and replication technology to seamlessly migrate systems to the cloud.In essence, InMage provides four services backup, replication,cloud migration and disaster recovery in one unified solution.InMage’s unique hybrid recovery technology enables granular recovery capabilities that can meet the most stringent recovery point and recovery time objectives while completely eliminating backups as a discrete operation. InMage is a significant improvement over the solution that MCR Safety formerly employed.Now they can pick any point in time and roll a system back to that point, to ensure the recovery point they are selecting is precisely where they want it right before a critical failure, file corruption or unwanted change.Choosing a solution that supports AIX was quintessential for MCR.InMage enables MCR to protect their AIX systems with the same awardwinning solution they use across operating systems, on both physical and virtual frastructure. Everything that runs their core business resides in SAP, powered by DB2 databases running on top of AIX which is the spinal column of their operations. The one solution approach of InMage saves MCR both time and money since they do not need to implement multiple disparate solutions to

  protect their AIX and Windows machines.Hypervisor heterogeneity and support for physical infrastructure were equally important to MCR. With over 100 VMs running business app

  lications, MCR Safety is no stranger to the needs of virtualization. MCR chose InMage because it covers the widest range of hypervisors and is the only company enabling customers to recover or migrate to any combination of physical and virtual targets even allowing the seamless migration from one hypervisor to another (i.e. VMware to HyperV). Only InMage was able to spin up a virtual machine, even if it was previously a physical machine, and have it running in a happy state with a few clicks.

   

   

  Result

  :

  After implementing the solution, MCR saw immediate value from InMage’s Continuous Data Protection (CDP). The continuous data protection is like having a DVR for their systems. They can pinpoint exactly where they want to be and find the files or volum es before

  they were corrupted. On multiple occasions, the team at MCR Safety has been able to use InMage to recover systems from as recently as a few minutes to as little as a few seconds from a

  problem or failure point. This has saved considerable time, effort and preserved their stellar

  reputation.Not only did InMage provide a superior backup and recovery solution to their prior product, eliminating backup windows and offering granular CDP, but it did so without any performance degradation. Michael decided to conduct an experiment and

  protected the test team’s servers, without letting the team know ahead of time, to see if they’d notice degradation in performance.Previously, they hadn’t backed up their test systems as there

  would always be a significant impact to performance at the 4 hour mark when the backups would begin. Michael’s test was a success; the systems were protected in realtime with InMage and

  the test team never noticed.Due to InMage’s unique lightweight architecture, MCR experienced

  no I/O overhead or impact to network performance. According to Michael, “InMage has no noticeable impact to our production systems even though it provides more granular data protection

  than our former solution.”Having worked with many solutions over the years, Michael

  considers InMage as the best of breed solution in the market for its unique mix of performance coupled with its robust capabilities that eliminate the need for multiple solutions. In fact, InMage supports the widest range of systems out of any solution available today.

  Michael is not just thrilled with the InMage product but he’s also been impressed with the team supporting him. “The professional services and support teams at InMage are absolutely stupendous.The folks who have helped us implement the solution and resolve any issues we have had, have been responsive, really taken ownership, and always made sure I was happy and comfortable with timelines and results. Without a doubt, they’re a 10 out of 10!”With InMage in place at MCR Safety, Michael and the rest of the MCR IT team rest easy at night. “I now have full confidence that if we ever have one of those really bad days, I get to be the hero and if I ever get stuck, I have the security of knowing I can pick up the phone and get one of the InMage’s support specialists to help me through it.”