Data backups are crucial to any IT organization but given the vast and ever-growing quantities of data that exist in most organization’s data networks, it can be a challenge to come up with a backup plan that adequately addresses business requirements but doesn’t break the bank.
To learn more about backup best practices, we turned to Scott Moody, who as Manager of Corporate 
Technology for Carousel Industries is responsible for the company’s internal IT needs. “It’s a battle,” Moody says of the backup challenge. Many users figure that, since disk drives continually drop in price it should be no problem to just back up everything. But all those 1 TB disk drives add up at the corporate level. “Just because disks are inexpensive doesn’t mean everything is worth saving,” he says.
Devising a Tiered Storage Plan
To deal with the issue, Carousel uses a tiered storage strategy. For its most critical data, such as the CRM system that supports some 500 employees and a few million transactions per day, Carousel replicates from its Exeter, R.I. headquarters to two off-site facilities every 15 minutes.
“If something happens in Rhode Island, we direct the consumption to the same like front-end database server sitting in a branch location,” Moody says. “The data is at worst 15 minutes old.”
To decide which data get this kind of “white glove” treatment, Carousel relies mostly on raw utilization, he says. SharePoint, for example, is used in dozens of business units, but only those that use it the most, and that have multiple input and consumption points, are backed up at that top tier.
Nightly backups for Second-tier Data
All data also gets backed up nightly but to different places depending on its level of importance. The most critical data, such as that CRM system, is backed up to a third party cloud provider. Less critical data goes to one of the other Carousel sites and the least critical is backed up to storage systems that are on site at headquarters. “There’s very little that doesn’t leave headquarters,” Moody notes, mainly just data from some lab and testing systems.
Personal Backups for Individual Employees
While the most important data generated by employees is stored centrally, and hence backed up according to one or both of the above options, some data remains on the employee’s own local machine. Because more than 70 percent of the Carousel work force is highly mobile, these folks have their own external hard drives and backup software that automates the process.
In addition to providing backup, that setup allows faster remediation should something go wrong with a user’s laptop, for example. “More often than not our remediation is just to replace the machine,” he says, and load it with data from the external drive. “Their time is too valuable to try to troubleshoot the problem over the phone.” That has the added benefit of enabling Carousel to keep its help desk fairly lean.
Out With the Old
Carousel also uses tools that come with its Dell EqualLogic storage systems, along with management tools from SolarWinds and ManageEngines, to regularly parse through data and classify it according to company policy. Some data is jettisoned altogether while data that needs to be kept but is relegated to less expensive NAS appliances. From there it can still be accessed if needed. “It’s just not as easy or fast,” Moody says. “You really have to want to see it.”
If you need help mapping out your own storage and backup strategy, just contact Carousel.
