Keeping back-up and archiving processes up to date
First established in 1863, Leek United Building Society has an excellent reputation for being friendly and efficient and with assets of over £660 million, 12 branches and close to 170 employees, is also a substantial organisation. One of the few mutual societies remaining in the UK, it is highly regarded and its mortgages and savings often feature in the best buy listings.

“Computer systems and networks are vital to efficient day to day operations” says Peter Excell, IT Development Team Leader at the Society, who is responsible for the IT network
at Leek United. “Our branches can work manually but all our systems depend on IT to function properly so it is of the highest importance to us.”

Leek’s main cash tills are all fully computerised. When cash deposits or withdrawals are made, the central database at head office in Leek is updated instantly – in ‘real-time’. As the Society is dealing in personal financial information, the back-up and recovery of data is absolutely critical and a disaster recovery plan has been in place ever since computer systems were first installed in the branches.

However, changes in the way that systems and the Society itself works meant that backup plans have had to be modified from time to time. The recent introduction of a document imaging system had increased the amount of storage – and thus back-up capacity required.

“We are driven by requirements to meet certain standards as laid down by the FSA
(Financial Services Authority) and the Building Societies Association, as well as legislation such as the Data Protection Act”, Excell explains. “More and more business is now becoming electronic, which means a simple email can be classed as a contract between us and one of our customers. The requirement for us to produce electronic evidence, for a variety of reasons, is growing. While nobody will tell us for what time we actually need to keep an email, we’ve taken the standard of seven years.”

Taking expert advice
When the need for improved back-up and email archiving system was identified, the Society called in Servo to help define requirements, with whom it already had an existingconsultancy contract. Servo thus helped to put together the Invitation for Tender for which it was subsequently asked to bid, alongside other suppliers.

This has happened quite often in the seven-year relationship between the two organisations. It is, Excell agrees, a slightly unusual arrangement, but one that has been proven to work. The Servo account manager meets regularly with Excell to discuss ongoing requirements and is very good at putting the right people with the right expertise forward, he says. “It works extremely well and it’s a very cost-effective relationship from our perspective and being a mutual building society that is paramount to us.”

Servo, he explains, has become much more than an IT supplier to the Society. “To train people up in certain areas of expertise would take a long time so we see Servo as an extension of ourselves. We have a business partnership whereby they provide us with the expertise we need to plan, develop and implement changes to our systems. We still manage those systems – what they supply is the expertise to help us get from where we are to where we want to be.”

Although there is a good established relationship between the two companies, any new business must be won on merit. Leek’s own regulations stipulate that any major contract must go out to tender with at least three suppliers and in practice they usually go to as many as six. Servo has won the last three major ITTs – and by some distance, says Excell. “That reflects their understanding of not only our business, but of other building societies they work with.”

Capabiliy to cover all requirements
In the case of the data back-up and email archiving project which Leek put out to tender in late summer of 2005, Servo won the contract on the basis that it could cover the whole spectrum of requirements – which most companies invited to tender could not. It was also due to Servo’s expertise in the Legato intelligent back-up management software that helped secure the contract.

Servo had recommended Legato in its proposal and on close examination, the Society realised that this enterpriseclass solution was the only one that could provide a sufficient reduction in the back-up window i.e. the time needed to perform the back-up process that the Society needed. “We need to make sure that our network connections are free and open for branch traffic during working hours so our back-up window is reduced to the time when they are not functioning – in other words, overnight.”

Servo also proposed a unique way of meeting the Society’s need to rapidly restore certain types of key information; this was also a stipulation of the ITT. “We wanted not only to be able to back-up and restore, but certain key data has timescales within which we would need to get it back.” Servo showed in its proposal how Legato could be used to do this by initially backing up to disk, then onto tape and then also to a disk at Leek’s remote disaster recovery site.

The Society was also looking to strengthen its recovery on six key Microsoft Windows 2003 servers. Servo put forward Symantec LiveState Recovery, which suited needs well and was more cost-effective than other options. The entire project had to be finished within a bandwidth limitation; the Society has 256K links and increasing this would inflate costs significantly.

The complete back-up and archiving solution Servo proposed, which has subsequently been installed, enables the Society to manage the process efficiently and keep a precise track of all back-ups, so that it can recover key applications, data and servers very quickly. It is also extremely safe – all data is backed-up simultaneously onto a high capacity HP Tape Library and also to the disaster recovery site. In addition, tapes are ‘cloned’ and removed to a third location on a daily basis, giving the Society several points of failure.

All the time-critical information and branch data, which will contain vital customer details, can be recovered almost immediately. “It’s a complete system and we worked with Servo to define the service levels and standards, the realtime copying and distribution and overnight staging of the tape back-ups”, says Excell. “The whole project has made backing-up much quicker, more efficient and bolstered the disaster recovery system.”

Lower administration overheads and complete protection
As a result, the administrative overhead of back-up has been lowered significantly. It is now just a matter of one individual performing a quick check to make sure everything has worked properly overnight. Tests of the restore process have shown it to be very easy and effective to put into practice.

The Society had not completed a full test of its disaster recovery processes at the time this study was written, but Excell estimated that, with the new system in place, it will take less than two hours to have branches up and running again in the event of a major failure or loss of access to core systems. He does not envisage any problems with the back-up and email archiving system, which has been specified to last for seven years and up to two Terabytes of data – double the capacity requirements when the system was installed.

For the email archiving, Servo put forward the ZANTAZ Enterprise Archive Solution (EAS) system which has brought immediate and tangible benefits. It is easier for users to find and recall archived messages as they are all indexed and a special search tool is provided to make this simple. Users do not have to worry about deleting emails as they are archived instantly and automatically so the Society is protected from both legal and compliance perspectives.

Overall, Excell is very happy with the service received from Servo and impressed by the company’s ability to meet the Society’s needs, particularly where individual projects are concerned. It is also consistent in its approach. “We tend to have had the same crew working on our projects. We have built up this relationship and when they win bids, we ask them to bring back the same project manager and key engineer. We just find that it works very well for us.”

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