Tech Data
accelerates backups in
Case Study
Objective
Ensure business continuity with
a flexible and fully auditable
backup solution
Approach
Used industr y specialist to assist
in upgrading legacy backup software
from HPE
IT Matters
• Reliable, automated backup creation
• Single console view delivers easy to
manage and maintain data backup
• Federated deduplication function
reduces backup data volumes
Business Matters
• Ensures business continuity
in the event of a disaster
• Auditor-approved backup strategy
ensures business compliance
• Integrates easily into new and
expanding IT environments
a complex environment
HPE Data Protector secures data for one
of world’s largest IT distributors
Challenge
Audit-proof backups for a
heterogeneous environment
The Tech Data Corporation is one
of the world’s largest distributors of
IT products, services and solutions.
With highly developed logistics capabilities
and tried-and-tested value-add services,
Tech Data supports more than 115,000
distribution partners in over 100 countries,
helping them to meet their customers’
unique technological demands eiciently
and cost-eectively.
The company has experienced strong
growth in recent years, both organically
and through acquisitions. For example,
its takeover of SDG in 2012 brought
a great number of IT distributors in
Great Britain, France and the Netherlands
into the company.
“This strong growth has led to an average
annual increase in data volumes of around
10 per cent in recent years. And it’s
obviously been even higher in years
in which we’ve made acquisitions,”
explains Oliver Wriedt, IT Administrator
at Tech Data’s European headquarters
in Munich. Wriedt is responsible for
backing up all of the data outside
of the core SAP system.
The company’s core applications include
products developed in-house as well as
SAP Business Information Warehouse, SAP
Supply Chain Management and SAP CRM.
These applications are absolutely critical to
the IT distributor’s operations as without
them, it would not be able to deliver any of
its products.
Case study
Tech Data
“The main benefit of HPE Data Protector is that it can support very
– Oliver Wriedt, IT Administrator, Tech Data
Industry
IT Service Provider
heterogeneous IT landscapes. We have been able to integrate
everything very easily and create audit-friendly backups quickly,
even for new environments.”
Page 2
One of the key factors on which auditors
assess companies is whether risks, that
could halt business processes, are kept to an
absolute minimum. Regular, secure backups
are therefore extremely important for Tech
Data as they enable it to quickly restore its
data, applications and databases.
Solution
HPE Data Protector as standard
across the company
Tech Data has been using HPE Data
Protector software to create its backups
for almost 20 years.
“As the backups are reliable, we can
guarantee high availability for all of our
user data. Our business processes will
always continue to run without interruption
and that means that our systems pass the
strict audits every time,” says Wriedt.
“The main benefit for us in the IT
department is that the software is incredibly
flexible in terms of the dierent systems
it can connect with. It supports a great
number of heterogeneous systems. This
is particularly beneficial when we acquire
new companies, and is a key reason for our
decision to make HPE Data Protector our
standard backup software.”
Tech Data’s IT landscape is unusually
heterogeneous. Its data centre covers
almost every operating system available,
from various Windows® operating system
versions to UNIX® and Linux. Plus, there
is also a VMware cluster. On top of this
the company uses mainly Oracle Database
and Microsoft® SQL Server.
Benefit
Hassle-free backups, even
after acquisitions
“Our backup software has to be able to
cope with all kinds of technologies as
we tend to keep companies’ legacy IT
infrastructures running in the initial period
after we acquire them,” says Wriedt.
“HPE Data Protector has never disappointed
us in this respect. We have so far been
able to integrate everything very easily
and to quickly create audit-proof backups
of the new environments. We are very
happy with it.”
Unusual Linux derivatives and file systems
have been integrated over the years and
Wriedt also praises the backup software’s
ease of use to incorporate these more
unusual demands.
The company currently has almost 400
terabytes of data being backed up to HPE
StoreEver MSL tape libraries of various sizes,
some in Munich and others spread across 24
of its branch oices. The backups are always
triggered from the Munich headquarters.
Case study
Tech Data
Industry
IT Service Provider
Customer at a glance
Hardware
• HPE StoreEver MSL Tape Library
Software
• HPE Data Protector
About eSell
eSell GmbH was founded in 1999
and is an HPE Gold Partner.
Its core business focuses on the
conceptualisation, installation
and implementation of highly
available IT architectures for
business-critical applications such
as SAP in Unix environments. Its
customers include private and
public sector companies with
particularly high requirements
in terms of the reliability and
disaster-tolerance of their data
centre operations. The company
has oices in Saarbrucken and
Holzkirchen near Munich.
During a standard week, the majority of
the company’s data and applications is
incrementally backed up to tapes then full
system backups are run at the weekend.
Certain systems such as SAP Business
Information Warehouse are backed up
throughout the day. To ensure that these
backups do not aect the performance
of its productive operations, Tech Data
uses high performance input/output (I/O)
throughout its backup environment, and
the company is in regular contact with
HPE Gold Partner eSell to ensure everything
continues running smoothly.
“We have been developing the backup
environment with eSell’s assistance for
many years. Having a competent partner
there to support us makes it a fast and
simple process,” says Wriedt.
Thanks to this partnership, Tech Data now
has three installations of HPE Data Protector
running with around 400 clients. eSell also
helped Tech Data to plan its migration to
HPE Data Protector 9.03 when support for
its existing version was being discontinued.
It not only advised the company on technical
queries, but also on its licensing options.
The new version of the backup software
has enabled Tech Data to decrease its
backup capacities dramatically through
HPE StoreOnce deduplication technology.
This has the knock-on benefit of reducing
the number of tapes the company has to
manage. Restore time in the event of a
disaster has also been reduced, thanks
to a variety of new automation functions.
The IT department will soon be able to use
HPE Data Protector to create image backups
of the VMware directly from VMware itself
– a function that was not possible with the
version Tech Data was previously using.
Wriedt concludes: “This will make restoring
the virtualisation platform faster than
ever before.”
Learn more at
hpe.com/software/dataprotector
Sign up for updates
Rate this document
© Copyright 2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. The information contained herein is subject to change without
notice. The only warranties for Hewlett Packard Enterprise products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements
accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its ailiates.
4AA6-5778EEW, June 2016
Loading...