Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines Americas, LLC (WWLA) is the world's largest ocean transportation provider for vehicles or machinery that can be rolled on and off ocean vessels. It specializes in the transportation of cars, agricultural and construction machinery, boats, and project cargo. In addition to ocean transportation, the Scandinavian-owned carrier offers logistics management, vehicle processing, terminal management and stevedoring, and land transportation services.
The information WWLA stores in its databases and other parts of its technology infrastructure is not information that is easily duplicated or reentered. In many cases, the company captures live transactions, such as EDI transactions, details of customer histories and other proprietary services. Information technology staff members said WWLA would be devastated even by a minimal data loss.
"It is just plain unacceptable for us to lose data," said Kevin Whitney, network administrator at WWLA. "We need to feel comfortable and secure with the backup and disaster recovery solution we use."
WWLA operates 59 individual Windows NT servers. Of these servers, 20 run Microsoft Exchange Server, several others run Microsoft SQL Server and the others run a variety of other in-house applications and data management programs.
Approximately 25 of these servers are located at remote office sites scattered across the United States. These remote office sites, which house customer service, sales and operations representatives, do not have IT personnel in-house to remedy any problems that may occur with data loss. Therefore, it was imperative that the backup and disaster recovery solution WWLA chose be reliable without requiring continual, manual oversight.
"Because our IT staff supports a large portion of the company's information technology infrastructure remotely, data loss or crashed servers caused by buggy and unreliable software can cause particularly serious problems for us," said Whitney.
After investing in approximately 15 copies of another type of backup software, WWLA determined it needed a more reliable solution. The company chose UltraBac as its permanent tool for backup and disaster recovery. IT staff now enjoy the peace of mind that a dependable backup and disaster recovery software program brings.
Using UltraBac, WWLA routinely backs up Microsoft Exchange databases; Microsoft SQL databases; proprietary data from in-house applications; Word, Excel, and Power Point documents and other miscellaneous applications and associated data. IT staff simply instruct the solution to run full back ups every day and sit back and relax.
UltraBac's network disaster recovery tool also allows WWLA administrators to recover any data lost due to outside forces at the push of a button. By executing UltraBac's restore technology, WWLA data can be retrieved easily in a matter of minutes.
Whitney said UltraBac is simple to install, operate and administer. That allowed his staff members to implement the solution quickly, as well as manage it without needing to maintain a continual hands-on approach.
"UltraBac's notification features give us daily updates regarding any problems with backups and the general health of our system," said Whitney. "The capability to quickly restore data and simply check the status of a backup and walk away to do other things, has saved us valuable time and man-hours we'd otherwise have to devote to manually monitoring our system."
Windows NT 4.0 Server
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft SQL Server
Intel processors
Compaq Servers
|
