Angus said: “Previously when we had an offsite service via Backup Exec, we would actually send a driver with an external drive to fetch data because it would take too long to recover across the WAN links. We find we don’t do that these days. We just do everything virtually now.
“A server restoration from a crash might easily have taken up to two-and-a-half days so there’s been a massive saving there. “If a server had gone down for a day when 20 administrators were capturing data that we use for billing, we might end up paying overtime because people have to come in over weekends. “It’s very different now with Redstor. We had a server outage last year and managed to rebuild the server, virtualise it and restore everything fast enough to avoid any staff downtime. “Following our transition with SEACOM, OneDrive has become the primary method for individual backups. “Users literally put their work in OneDrive and if their hard drive crashes we stick another hard drive in and download everything from the Redstor backup.
“We do recoveries from servers about twice a month - flat files for the odd user here and there. We also still have the odd user who stores critical data on their hard drive rather than using OneDrive.”
Having a flexible data management solution that Averda can tailor to the business has helped in many ways.
Angus added: “We were unable to migrate a number of older operating systems because they can’t work on newer versions of SQL Server, but we fired up a few virtual machines on lower operating systems like Server 2012 and do everything via the Redstor cloud.” Angus added: “I particularly like that we can choose between four options - permanent file recovery, temporary file recovery, full system recovery or bare metal. That is a feature not generally available through other products. “Temporary file access is great because we don’t need any additional hard drive space. A copy of the data is on a temporary virtual drive.”
Averda have found Redstor’s subscription-based pricing model to be simple, cost effective and predictable.
By only paying for what data Averda select to protect, Angus knows he can scale up or down as demand changes without worrying about any hidden costs or surprises that might blow his budget. He said: “Billing purely on data volume is a great thing for us because it allows us to put the Redstor client on all our systems. “We buy a pool of virtual resources from our data centre partner then when we decide something new needs backing up, we just put Redstor on those new servers. “We roll it out, knowing the cost does not go up for more devices, we just have to keep an eye on our total data. “That means we know exactly what we will pay every month. If we need to go over our agreed data limit, we have the option to pay for a little additional storage. So, in the case of an emergency, it’s all very straightforward
In the event of a ransomware attack, Averda now has the reassurance of being able to recover all data and systems to a state before infection.
This has not always been the case.
Angus revealed: “When Averda bought out a company called Sharpmed, one of the servers that we had semi-archived was the Pastel Accounting database and it got hit by ransomware before we had moved it across to the Redstor cloud. “That was a lesson we learned very quickly. It was a kick start for us to get all our core systems into the Redstor cloud as soon as possible.” With Redstor, backups are isolated from Averda’s live environment so they can't be targeted by cybercriminals. Averda’s data is also encrypted before it leaves any devices - and it remains encrypted at all times, in transit and in storage.