Management at bedding manufacturer Sealy NZ Ltd are sleeping more soundly at nights after switching to an offsite remote disaster recovery (DR) solution that ensures they lose no more than 15 minutes’ data in the event of a crash.

The solution was implemented by Disaster Recovery Group (DRG), using StorageCraft’s ShadowProtect backup solution. The new setup compares with Sealy’s former ‘world-leading’ tape backup product, that required their IT team to go back two months before being able to perform a reliable restore.

The problem was identified during an annual IT review. Although the company’s former tape backup product was reporting successful backups, minimal data was being written to tape in a readable format. As a result, Sealy sought an alternative solution.

“We experienced the pain of potential data loss and decided we never wanted to be in that position again,” said Sealy Director Hugh Rockfort. “We made a strategic decision to go with an organisation and solution able to eliminate the cost and complexity of backup, file recovery and disaster recovery (DR).”

After careful evaluation they chose Disaster Recovery Group, which specialises in off-site backup and disaster recovery.

Hugh Rockford said: “It was a logical choice for us as they are able to backup our critical systems every 15 minutes throughout the day and replicate the data to an off-site DR data centre in real time. Now, if we experience a failure or outage of a critical server, we simply phone DRG and they can bring our production servers up in a virtual environment, redirect users to that virtual server in their data centre, and in literally minutes or hours we are back in full production with a system restored to the exact state we were in 15 minutes before – unbelievable!

“We pride ourselves in enabling Sealy customers to sleep uninterrupted at night on our beds, and I can say thankfully that DRG and ShadowProtect give our IT team and management the same level of comfort!”

Some years before, Sealy experienced extended downtime due to a server hard drive failure. Using their former solution they were unable to restore from recent backup tapes. Eventually they found a tape several months old, hence they lost a substantial amount of data. They had printed copies of all the lost transactions, but these had to be re-keyed manually in a time-consuming process.

According to Hugh Rockfort, the company can now prove that their backup and DR strategy works, since checking its capabilities no longer involves intrusive, disruptive or laborious testing. The solution is simply a phone call away.

Eliminating the cost and complexity of providing backup, recovery and disaster recovery has been highly cost-effective. Alternative solutions considered ran to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

About Sealy NZ Ltd

Sealy Corporation (www.sealy.co.nz) is the one of the largest and most renowned bedding manufacturers in the world. Sealy manufactures and markets a broad range of mattresses and foundations under the Sealy, Sealy Posturepedic, Streams& Foster and Bassett brand names. The Sealy name is synonymous with restful night’s sleep.

In New Zealand, Sealy is headquartered in Auckland and employs more than 60 staff located at its head office and manufacturing plant. The company services more than 100 customers, including three nationwide client accounts.

About StorageCraft StorageCraft Technology Corporation provides innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops. StorageCraft delivers software products that reduce downtime, improve security and stability for systems and data and lower the total cost of ownership for servers, desktops and laptops. www.storagecraft.com

For more information Greg Wyman, StorageCraft Regional Director Asia Pacific Phone: +612-9929 9770 or mobile +61-402 259 359 Email: Greg.Wyman@storagecraft.com

Hugh Rockfort, Sealy NZ Ltd Director Phone: +64.9.481 0700 Email: HAR@sealy.co.nz