One of the most advanced and robust IT disaster recovery systems has been installed at the AHDB Warwickshire headquarters, following the appointment of Leeds-based virtualDCS to design, implement and manage the project.
The system has now been named the Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) Project of the Year at the Storage, Digitalisation and Cloud (SDC) Awards.
Jamie Blakeman, IT support manager at AHDB, explained: “When it came to procuring a new disaster recovery solution, we knew we wanted a robust DR plan, with a system that would offer minimal recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs), as well as using some of the best technology available. Ultimately, being able to access our data quickly and easily, and under any circumstances, was a key requirement.
“Potential suppliers were sought through G-Cloud, which is the UK Government framework that enables the public sector to procure IT services via the Digital Marketplace. virtualDCS was selected because the company could provide a robust DR solution, with very low RPOs, through its single CloudCover service.
“The new system was up and running in a matter of weeks. After the hardware racking was completed and the software was installed, most of the installation and configuration were done remotely and the longest part was synchronising the data.
“Our old solution was a dated product as well as being difficult and complicated to use. Now we know that data, files and systems can be quickly restored.”
Kerri Milburn, project delivery specialist at virtualDCS, said: “To win an award for this bespoke and innovative solution is a huge coup for everyone involved, as well as reinforcing to AHDB how robust the system is.
“The challenge of protecting data has never been greater, with it held in local sites, on public clouds and SaaS solutions. This project was novel as AHDB wanted to protect backup data and provide DR for these scenarios, but they didn’t want their protection on the public cloud.
“In addition, it needed to be a secure and disaster-proof backup and recovery system that offered native, near-time replication, as well as being easy to use, meaning in the event of an incident, they have the freedom and autonomy to immediately invoke it themselves.
“Our CloudCover solution allows them to protect and replicate their data from on-premises and Azure servers, as well as Microsoft 365. It offers full backups and near real-time failover of its systems, as well as protecting against ransomware and other cyber nasties.
“By bringing top-tier applications together, we can provide fast and reliable offsite protection. The solution protects both the onsite and public cloud workloads to the DR site in question, across different locations with ease, as well as providing the desired RPOs and RTOs. This gives AHDB peace of mind that they can failover to replica virtual machines on our platform with minimal user interruption.”
