The North Carolina (NC) DPI serves 100 counties and 15 cities, all running IBM’s iSeries platform and connected to DPI in various forms.
With many mission-critical systems, including the state’s student information system, human resource management system, payroll and financial management applications hosted on NC DPI’s iSeries servers, protection and accessibility are key issues for the agency, said Tod Kisner, CEO for Strategic Systems, a SafeData partner responsible for the NC DPI account.
With nine separate environments that were all backed up differently, the DPI incurred significant media costs and was required to manually switch back and forth between the systems. Using SafeData/DR, the department expects to save about $10,000 a year alone in media expenses. The system was also chosen because it is an online offering, and because it guaranteed that the DPI would be up and running in less than 10 hours in the event of a system failure.
SafeData’s service includes disk-to-disk backup and restoration capabilities. Its vaulting capability eliminates the potential for lost, damaged or obsolete tapes. It also offers secure access to files via a standard web browser.
