ArcLight combines technical expertise with access to premium solutions while providing a nimble experience. ArcLight allows us to focus on our core products as they provide us with an IT framework, hardware and security. ArcLight moved us from a disorganized mess to a smooth system with effective support.
Problem
Historically, backing up server data meant relying on tape systems to backup file data daily and required that a tape be manually exchanged and physically carried off-site nightly to provide some form of physical business continuity should disaster strike. This method was woefully inadequate and lead to many businesses discovering the hard way that their critical files did not back up when they needed them the most.
As veteran IT professionals, the ArcLight team is well acquainted with the pain that loss of data can cause a business. Losing even a small piece of critical data can mean hours of duplicated work (and employee hours) to recover from, and losing a large quantity of data can even go so far as to completely ruin a company overnight. We consider the integrity of your data to be our number one priority and have developed an extraordinarily robust Backup and Disaster Recovery solution which is second to none.
FA Williams Inc. Mechanical Contractors experienced first-hand this terror of data loss. On Sunday, their primary hypervisor server hosting five different windows virtual servers lost two drives simultaneously. This destroyed the integrity of their RAID array and thus the data of all five virtual servers. This included their Exchange e-mail server, their shared-drive file server, their jobs and accounting database server, and their entire Active Directory infrastructure.
Solution
Data loss on this level would be crippling to any business that did not have effective backups and disaster recovery plans in place. Scenarios such as what occurred with F.A. Williams occur regularly throughout every industry. True business continuity means anticipating these disasters and planning to succeed regardless.
Since FA Williams has partnered with ArcLight and engaged our services for image-based snapshot backups, we had their data stored in multiple locations including locally for a quick recovery, as well as cloud-based in case of a larger disaster. We were able to rush deploy a temporary hypervisor server to their offices and restore all of their virtual servers to within an hour of the system failure. Come Monday morning they were able to continue working as if nothing had happened. In the background, we worked with their server hardware vendor to replace the failed components, and once their primary server was restored to full functionality we migrated their running virtual machines back to their original host.
Nobody wants to have to use their disaster recovery solution. However, when the need arises, you want to have the best. With ArcLight, we prepare every day to make sure a disaster cannot bring down your business.
