Pinnacle rolls out Redstor online backup

Over four decades of worldwide logistics, Pinnacle has established a drive to deliver a quality service. Prior to looking into online backup, Pinnacle was using external USB hard drives to store their data. This presented a number of challenges to the organisation which has offices in three separate locations and required a solution that was both efficient and robust.

Whilst using the USB hard drives, multiple drives were required on site to accommodate the volume of data that needed to be backed up. The company was finding that this method of backing up data was becoming increasingly time consuming both in terms of actually backing up the data but also managing other aspects of the backup process. This included transporting the external hard drives, checking the validity of backup data and performing test restores.

Marc Holt, IT Manager for Pinnacle commented, "using the old solution was starting to become tiresome and inefficient as it took so long to back up and the software we used alongside the external disks was clunky and unintuitive. We were spending up to an hour every day managing the backup process which became a job in itself. As well as this, if holidays or offsite meetings were arranged, another member of staff had to take responsibility to perform backups."

As an organisation, Pinnacle is seeking to attain the very stringent Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) certification, which provides customers and authorities with assurances that their data and information is 100% secure and that their customs controls and procedures are efficient and compliant.

A significant factor in the decision to seek a more robust data backup solution was an issue that the company had experienced. Marc Holt explains, "a few years ago we had a critical issue in the US office when one of our fans overheated causing the server to shut down and become unreliable. Due to the nature of the issue we were unable to remotely start the system from the UK which meant we had to order a brand new server. The server then had to be configured manually and data restored piece by piece which became a lengthy operation. The Redstor disaster recovery facility would have saved many hours and would have helped greatly."

Solution

Pinnacle first met with Redstor in early 2014 when IT Manager Marc Holt began looking for a new answer to the organisation's current USB hard drive backup solution. After extensive research into cloud backup providers and following a recommendation from Leicester County Council, Marc undertook a demo of Restor's Cloud Backup Service and eventually rolled it out to five servers and two directors' machines across the business' multiple offices.

When the service was first implemented, it was used to backup 1.5TB of the company's most critical data. Within the past 12 months, this volume has increased to over 4TB, including a greater percentage of Pinnacle's total company data.

Marc Holt comments, "Data backup is an essential requirement of our business and we knew that moving forward we needed a solution that is robust, reliable and ultimately reduces the time spent managing the service. After an online demonstration of the technology, the Redstor service seemed like a perfect fit for our requirements. The fact that Redstor was ISO certified was a huge draw for us, as it tied in well with our seeking AEO certification, showing their continued commitment to security and establishes them as a proven provider."

He adds, "The installation process went very smoothly and the service was flexible enough to use in-line with our USB backups to reduce downtime. There was a brief issue with backups failing in relation to Exchange at the outset but the Redstor support team were on hand to help and it was easily ironed out."

Results

Since implementing Redstor's online backup solution 12 months ago, Pinnacle is now successfully backing up over 4TB of important company data. As well as this, the organisation has seen added value in the reduction of overall time spent managing the service.

Marc Holt says, "With our previous solution, we were spending up to an hour a day making sure the backups were successful. This has been significantly reduced to just one hour a week. Due to Redstor's automation and daily backup notification emails verifying that the backups are successful, we have a much better peace of mind."

In February 2015, the organisation experienced an issue with their Sage accounting software due to an erroneous transaction. This meant that Pinnacle needed to backtrack to identify and fix the issue. Using Redstor's online backup, they were successfully able to restore to before the erroneous transaction occurred, drastically reducing the time taken to rectify the problem.

Marc Holt concludes, "Overall the directors and management team are extremely pleased with the relationship with Redstor. They understand that data protection is critical to the business' continued success and is an area that requires significant attention from a proven provider, which we now have. Whilst we haven't quite finished AEO approval yet, the online backup solution is a very important element to this and we see Redstor playing a key role in our objective to achieve this in the near future."