Calamos Cuts Backup Administration by 66% with APTARE StorageConsole
Calamos Investments is a diversified investment firm offering
equity, fixed-income, convertible and alternative investment strategies.
The company backs up 2.5 terabytes of data daily and 20 terabytes weekly
across 100+ clients. These backups protect mission-critical data that
enables Calamos to maintain a competitive edge.
"Since we are an investment firm, we need to backup a lot of proprietary
information, including client information, trade data, market research
and custom applications," explained Vince Corona, Storage Engineer,
Enterprise Services, of Calamos Investments.
Challenge
Time-Consuming Backup Administration and
Reporting
Prior to deploying APTARE StorageConsole, Calamos had no backup reporting
other than what Veritas NetBackup provides out of the box. For compliance
and auditing purposes, the Calamos team would have to collect all the
backup data, and identify what jobs had failed and why.
"Backup administration and reporting was taking quite a bit of
time," Corona said. "It was an intensive time-consuming process,
and it was a pain. We did not have a single place we could go to get
all the information we needed. To have that level of visibility into
our backup environment, we would have to write tons of scripts. Being
a Windows shop, scripting is not a feasible option.""
"In addition, we had no forecasting of our storage needs before
APTARE," Corona continued. "Forecasting was a complete hurdle
that we could not overcome. The information we were gathering did not
equate to what was really going on. We were always fighting for more
funds for tapes, and management wanted to know why. It was a constant
battle."
Solution
APTARE StorageConsole Delivers Single Dashboard for Backup Management
Calamos Investments chose APTARE StorageConsole because it is easy
to use and
saves time and administration by having a single dashboard where they
can pull reports, view their backup window, perform restores, and forecast
media requirements.
The backup admin team at Calamos utilizes StorageConsole every day
to manage and report on the backup process, and verify that they are
covered with enough tape media in the library.
"StorageConsole is so easy to use," Corona noted. "We
just bring it up, log in and there is our dashboard, which gives us
an instant look and analysis of our previous night's backups, and the
ones that are going tonight."
"I love the StorageConsole dashboard and the way we have been
able to customize it," he added. "A blanket product cannot
accurately look into everyone's NetBackup environment because they are
all different. One of the great APTARE features is being able to customize
it to accurately represent our environment. "
In addition, the Calamos team appreciates APTARE's world-class service,
which not only means responsiveness to any issues, but also working
with the customer to customize reports.
"StorageConsole has a good quality team behind it and I appreciate
that," Corona confirmed.
APTARE Results
Time Saving
"We used to spend three hours a day filing reports and preparing
for backups," Corona recalled. "The APTARE solution has enabled
us to condense this into one hour - cutting the time we spend in the
NetBackup environment by two-thirds. This gives us time to address the
many other jobs and projects we have."
Proactive Problem-Solving
APTARE StorageConsole provides the Calamos backup administrators with
in-depth visibility into the NetBackup environment, so they are much
better equipped to solve issues quickly.
"NetBackup touches every critical component in our IT infrastructure,"
Corona explained. "APTARE StorageConsole allows us to get deeper
into that environment than we ever could before. We can see if there
is an issue or if there is going to be an issue and attack it preemptively.
It is a great solution for giving us a more in-depth look at our backups
and network infrastructure as a whole."
Accurate Forecasting
"With regulations and company policy dictating a seven-year retention
policy, we have to keep a lot of tapes, and purchasing and storing all
of these tapes is not cheap," Corona explained. "We have to
buy tapes by the hundreds every few months or so. With better insight
into our environment, provided by APTARE, we can forecast how many tapes
we are going to need next year."
Calamos has been using StorageConsole to accurately forecast tape growth
of 2-3 tapes per month. Using StorageConsole to forecast next year's
allocation of tapes, the Calamos backup administration team plans to
streamline the process and save money on media by making one tape purchase
for the whole year - instead of monthly emergency purchases.
Management Confidence
"Our management trusts us to do our job," Corona concluded,
"as long as the reports are accurate and on time. APTARE makes
us look good."
