Doyenz Inc says that Himag Solutions has become the first UK client to use its recently launched rCloud service from its new London data centre.
With over ten years experience in the field of Planar Transformers, inverter technology and PCB design, Himag Solutions has become a worldwide leader with over 1.5 million planar transformers delivered including over 200 bespoke designs. The Gloucestershire based firm manufactures in both the UK and China with field sales staff and partners across the Americas, Europe and Asia.
The firm runs the majority of its key business activities from a Microsoft Small Business 2011 Server based at its headquarters in Quedgeley. The SBS server provides email, contact books, product database and remote access to critical files and is needed by users from across the world at any hour of the day,
Himag felt that its current business continuity position, using a daily backup removed off-site by a senior member of staff, was not robust enough. After seeking advice from Technos Solutions, a trusted IT service provider, the firm selected the Doyenz rCloud solution, a disaster recovery solution that can reduce the recovery period for physical and virtual environments to minutes instead of days.
In late November 2011, a technical team from Technos performed a local backup of the critical server which was seeded via a removable drive sent to the Doyenz UK datacentre in London. This complete server image was then updated in the rCloud with an incremental backup sent from Himag via a broadband connection every night.
“Under the old system, we estimated that if we had a server failure, say in the middle of the night, it would take us at least a day to recover in the best case scenario. Worse case of maybe several days if we needed to fully rebuild our server,” explains Dean Curran, Managing Director at Himag, “We have field staff and manufacturing partners around the world that need constant access to our Microsoft applications and the prospect of an IT outage for such a length of time was not acceptable for our growing export led business.”
Technos also provides Himag with a 24/7 server monitoring and troubleshooting service as part of its Business Continuity package. In January, the IT service provider ran a mock disaster recovery procedure to ensure that Himag was able to switch over to its Doyenz rCloud – even after a full server or simulated site outage.
Through its simple interface, rCloud can restore virtual production server environments in less than fifteen minutes by hosting virtualised images of the local production server in a remote cloud. In the event of an outrage, Himag staff can gain immediate access to business critical applications through any internet connected web browser. “The yearly cost of business continuity and server monitoring solution from Technos is less than one lost deal or delayed order,” explains Curran, “and for us, it provides a recovery position for our Microsoft Small Business Server which can be fully tested and able to deal with even the most severe outage.”
In addition, Technos can test system upgrades and new software on behalf of Himag using a replica IT production environment started in parallel from within the rCloud Virtual Lab. As Mike Gibbs, Managing Director for Technos explains, “If there is a major operating system patch or if we are integrating any new software, we can carry out the development work in the replica production server, test it and then go live in the production environment without impacting the client – this is a significant advantage which goes beyond Business Continuity.”
On 2nd December, Himag became the first customer to go live at the UK rCloud, hosted in a new Tier 1 data centre facility at Interxion in London. Doyenz will be releasing more information on the growing community of customers who have adopted its recovery services over the next few months.
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