Major IT Wins and Reliable Business Continuity for College’s Daily Operations
Using an incremental backup we had in Unitrends, I was able to restore the system in about a half hour...That was a pretty major win. Chris Howe
IT Director
Unitrends Solution for Rollins College
- Physical Windows Servers
- Physical Unix Servers
- Virtualized Windows Servers
- Ransomware protection
- Protection against accidental file deletion
- Full disaster recovery capabilities
The Challenge
Rollins College uses a specialized enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that is designed to address the unique IT challenges for higher education. This ERP system and database controls several vital functions that the college depends on daily for student and faculty coordination. Critical data in the system includes Rollins College’s financial data and the ability for students to register for classes. Chris Howe, the IT Director for Rollins College, needed a new backup solution that provided business continuity and disaster recovery for this ERP system and the college’s other IT assets. The ERP is vital to the college’s daily operations and the college could not risk losing functionality or the data records within it. It was Howe who would be liable for any loss or impact to the ERP database. Howe also needed a backup solution that would reduce complexity in the college’s IT infrastructure and, above all, to have assurance that backup and recovery is quick and reliable.
“Without the ERP system, the college does not run because it controls everything behind the scenes.”
Howe narrowed his decision to replace his existing backup solution down to two recovery solutions — Unitrends and tape backup solution Spectra Logic. After thoroughly investigating both solutions, Unitrends backup and business continuity solution was chosen because of its faster recovery times and simplicity for the user. “The biggest reason we decided to go with Unitrends over Spectra Logic was the ease of use and being able to control it on more of a per-machine basis,” Howe said.
Follow Up
Rollins put the Unitrends Recovery Series appliance to the test when its ERP database experienced a failure and Howe was left to resolve the issue. “We were performing an upgrade on our ERP system and had a file get corrupted during the upgrade process,” Howe said. “Using an incremental backup we had in Unitrends, I was able to restore the file and restore the system in about a half hour instead of our developers having to rebuild that file from scratch to get the system back up. That was a pretty major win. Without the ERP system, the college does not run because it controls everything behind the scenes. It was really nice to have confidence in the backup and be able to restore the critical file pretty easily,” Howe said. Not only did Unitrends enable Howe to solve the crisis effortlessly, he also noted that Unitrends does not just provide a solution but provides excellent technical support that is different from any other company — support that is there to meet individual needs as it did for Howe.
“It was really nice to have confidence in the backup and be able to restore the file pretty easily.”
