Challenges
- Uninterrupted server reliability required 24 x 7 x 365
- Minimise employee involvement
- Unify backup policy
Solution
- Critical Care High Availability service
- Cloud recovery option
Results
- Decreased data loss potential from 24 hours to 15 minutes
- Improved Recovery Time Objective from server failure
- Improved Disaster Recovery speed
- Increased compliance with Financial Service Authority
Improving the backup and recovery process
Duet Group is a global alternative asset manager, founded in 2002. The group manages over US$2.7 billion of assets over three business areas: Hedge Funds, Private Equity and Funds of Hedge Funds. The company has its head offices in London and also has a presence in New York, Tokyo, New Delhi and Dubai.
“Having a strong and reliable Business Continuity Program is vital to our business to ensure that an investment strategy can be implemented at any time. We needed a business continuity strategy that could be brought into play as easily at midnight as at noon,” stated Tue Sando, Duet’s general counsel.
Prior to working with DataFort Duet had been using a tape backup strategy for backup and recovery. “Many asset management firms rely on tape backup but this method had two key failings,” said Sando. “First, the time to recover was sometimes long. We deemed that risk unacceptable. But more importantly tape backup usually only takes place once a day. That could mean the loss of up to 24 hours’ worth of vital transactions and customer information. This is a risk that Duet does not find compatible with its regulatory obligations. Finally, we wanted to ensure that if a Business Continuity Event had occurred the data recovery can be handled seamlessly by an experienced firm, leaving capacity internally to deal with recovering workstations and phone systems.”
DataFort Provides DUET with Unified Backup & Recovery Services
Duet engaged DataFort to streamline their backup process, unify the data security policy for the company and improve Recovery Time Objectives. We reviewed the company operations and suggested a strategy where the majority of the company’s servers would be protected with the Hi-5 High Availability Service. Given the round the clock nature of Duet’s business if a disruptive event occurred, the company’s key employees would have cloud access to servers running from virtual images hosted in DataFort’s financial grade data centres. If access to the company’s premises was impacted for an extended period the infrastructure could be rebuilt on emergency premises from the images being actively used in the data centre.
Variable Point-in-Time Recovery Protects Against Data Corruption
The Critical Care service takes block level data updates of the data created by Duet’s production servers at 15 minute intervals. Hi-5 can recover data from images compiled from any time slice created over the past 7 days. This gives us the ability to recover corrupted or lost data, emails or databases from the point just prior to the corruption, minimizing data loss.
The service also compiles end of month read-only images back to the point of installation. This gives additional ROI by allowing the Hi-5 service to act as a data archive as well as a business continuity tool. These images are stored locally in the Duet office for convenience but are replicated to the data centre to comply with Financial Service Authority (FSA) guidelines for long term data retention.
The Result
“Hi-5 extends the reach of our staff without us assuming additional staff costs. It will work whenever we need it, deals with our equipment failure issues, tackles office based disasters, handles file loss or corruption and most importantly meets the FSA’s data security guidelines. The cost is fixed and manageable and the service is scalable, having the capacity to expand alongside the growth of our company,” says Mr. Sando.
Replacing the old-fashioned and time-consuming process of tape backup, the Critical Care High Availability service allows Duet Group to exceed FSA customer service and data security guidelines and requirements.
Tue Sando comments, “Duet takes the protection of our clients’ data extremely seriously. DataFort’s Hi 5 service has allowed Duet to strengthen its Business Recovery program and ensure that it not only complies with the FSA’s data storage guidelines but also gives our clients the best and the quickest data recovery service which an antiquated tape technology would not be able to provide.”
Sando concludes, “The choice to use DataFort above their competitors was simple. We wanted a provider who was large enough to survive the economic downturn, but not too big for us to be overlooked, as well as providing solid disaster recovery technology. DataFort gives us a comprehensive service with an exemplary working relationship. The system is reliable and has given us the security which we required to remain compliant as well as to continue to manage clients’ funds effectively with little or no disruption through server failure or disruptive event.”
About DataFort
Managed Service Provider (MSP) DataFort has been providing high security, FCA compliant services to the UK financial and legal services industry since 2000. With their award winning high availability and cloud services, DataFort brings enterprise grade security and continuity within the reach of smaller businesses.
CONTACTS
Marcie Terman
T: +44 (0) 1483 872 052