Case Study Heartland Technology Solutions

Fast-growing IT services provider implemets e ective backup and restore solution for businesses hit by catastrophe to maintain data integrity through any kind of disaster.
Customer
Heartland Technology Solutions

Industry
IT Services

Products
TeraStation WSS Windows Storage Server StorageCraft ShadowProtect StorageCraft ImageManager

Heartland Technology Solutions has been taking care of business in the nations Midwest for more than 26 years. As one of the nations fastestgrowing managed service providers specializing in solutions for small to mid-sized businesses and K-12 educational institutions, the company sprung into action in May 2011 to help companies get back on their feet after an EF5 tornado devastated more than 500 businesses in Joplin, Missouri.

The Challenge
This natural disaster dramatically illustrated the e ects of catastrophic data loss and the need for e ective backup and disaster recovery strategies. Studies have estimated that nearly half of the small to midsized businesses which su er catastrophic data loss stand to go out of business within ve years. But even the loss of a single le can interrupt business processes and result in costly downtime. Heartland engages in ongoing e orts to identify and implement better and more e ective ways to ensure data integrity through any kind of disaster. Later in 2011, Heartland embarked on what became a year-and-a-half evaluation of hardware and software to identify more exible and e ective ways of providing maximum protection for its clients dataand its own. The dedicated backup and recovery system that Heartland had been using had begun to show its ageand its limitations. Cost, capacity and scalability were key considerations; upgrades to the old system required the purchase of an entirely new hardware.

Goals
To implement an a ordable and e cient disaster recovery solution. Identify exible and e ective method of providing manimum data protection. Economically upgrade clients hardware with capacity and scalability as key considerations.

Solution
TeraStation WSS Windows Storage Server used with StorageCraft ShadowProtect

Results
Heartland Technology Solutions now has an e ective and comprehensive solution for preserving the integrity of clients data. Reliable storage hardware Seamless Windows integration Quick and ecient installtion Quick restoration in the event of a disaster Minimized downtime

Action Taken
Heartland opted for a combined solution, choosing Bualo Americas for hardware and StorageCraft Technology Corporation for software. Heartland selected Bu alos TeraStation WSS NAS Appliance and StorageCrafts ShadowProtect and ImageManager as its backup and disaster recovery software. Because the TeraStation WSS runs Microsoft Windows Storage Server, it proved to be an ideal platform for ShadowProtect and ImageManager, which are designed to run on Windows-based systems. The TeraStation WSS uses industry-standard RAID 5 technology to provide the faulttolerance that is necessary for data back-up solutions. Heartland was so impressed with the performance of the combined o ering that they not only began replacing backup-and-recovery systems at each client site with the new solution, they implemented it as the backup solution for their data center as well. Very quickly, it became central to Heartlands solutions o ering.

Case Study | Heartland Technology Solutions

Heartland serves a number of rural clients in tertiary markets where high-speed Internet connections are often unavailable, and clients sometimes struggle to achieve even a 512 Kbps upstream connection. Using ShadowProtect, Heartland creates an initial seed image and stores it on an external device, such as a USB hard drive. That device is shipped to Heartlands data center to be replicated on the server. By shipping the disk with the initial seed image, the client avoids having to upload gigabytes of data over its Internet connection. The incremental backup can transfer at its own pace so the backup isnt throttled by their Internet connection. It will run even if their Internet connection is down and can transfer the incremental updates when the connection is restored. The clients Windows-based servers, running applications such as Exchange or SQL, use StorageCraft ShadowProtect to back up data to the TeraStation WSS that is located on-site. StorageCraft ImageManager, which runs on the TeraStation at the client site, sends incremental changes to Heartlands data center in Papillon, Nebraska, to update the o-site image. Heartland uses multiple TeraStation WSS units at their data center to store their clients ShadowProtect images. ShadowProtect not only backs up data, it creates an image of the entire operating system and all applications, settings and data les. Everything that is on the server is contained in the image. In a disaster recovery scenario, the image data can be used to quickly restore an entire servereven to di erent hardware. The image can also be restored to a virtual machine to minimize downtime. When clients want to recover, they dont have to go to a web portal and download a le; they can just pick the les they need and restore them on the y. For their own use, Heartland reversed the process used for their clients. Since Heartlands data resides at its data center, the backups are made from the data center to TeraStation WSS devices located in their o ces.

Results
TeraStation WSS Windows Storage Server NAS appliance combined with StorageCraft ShadowProtect o ers a cost e ective and comprehensive solution for Heartlands clients, preserving the integrity of valuable data. We were looking for something that would allow us to be more creative with our solutions. This combination o ered a exible solution scalable to a variety of needs.
- Derek Kuhr NOC Manager, Heartland Technology Solutions

The protected data is always accessible because it is continually backed up. In turn, the backup is archived o-site at the data center, ensuring a prompt recovery if disaster strikes. It just works! said Kuhr.

Key Benets
Windows Storage Server platform ideal for StorageCraft software Initial seed image o ers quick installation with paced incremental backup to reduce throttling On-site backup solution with with o -site imaging Quick data restoration to a virtual machine for minimal downtime Economical and comprehensive backup soltuion to ensure data integrity

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