Under FSA regulations, in the event of a disaster, a percentage of QMT’s business must be able to maintain operational continuity – failure to achieve this will result in a hefty penalty. QMT’s business operations rely on a complex server-based infrastructure, housing mission critical systems including a client database, and broking application. These systems need to be accessible and secure for its staff, customers and inspectors - at all times.
Paul Cole, IT Manager at Quote Me Today, explained, “Our slim IT resources, mean that we do not have the ability to respond quickly and effectively to an IT outage. We considered the risks and regulatory penalties of a prolonged IT outage carefully, and concluded that we required a fully managed, constantly tested, DR service from a specialist provider who guarantees to restore our systems - within minutes of getting a call for help.”
The Plan B service replaces QMT’s basic recovery method, consisting of tape backup for its critical data. Plan B installed a snapshotting appliance into QMT’s network, to automatically take daily copies of its infrastructure. The system snapshots are then securely transferred to Plan B’s remote rescue platform, where they are converted and reconfigured as ‘rescue images’ to run in Plan B’s virtual environment, as fully working replicas of QMT’s live servers.
Plan B is unique as they don’t just update system snapshot copies, but go on to automatically build and test new recovery systems - every night. This critical approach to testing enables Plan B to guarantee almost instant recovery of QMT’s working systems - when required.
To assess the recovery speed and effectiveness of Plan B’s service, a test invocation was carried out to check the functionality of the recovery solution. Plan B passed the test with flying colours, as QMT were able to access an exact, fully working replica of its live server, via a VPN - in well under 20 minutes.
Paul Cole concluded, “Plan B solve all the complex issues of testing and seem to be the only DR provider that offers guaranteed recovery - up front. Plan B’s daily testing regime also uncovered a potential problem with our Exchange Server. Without their thorough tests, I would have hit this problem without any warning. This really highlighted to me how fantastic their service is. Using the Plan B service, gives me real peace of mind and their fees are very competitive – especially considering the great service that they offer.”
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Tags: BC/DR, Cloud Storage |
