Air Force Turns To BluPointe For Backup and Recovery

The Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence (AFCEE) base recently enlisted Atlanta-based BluPointe DRS to implement a backup-and-recovery solution that protects data both nearline and remotely, relying on technology from Asigra.

Nearline storage is a faster alternative than archival, making it ideal for data that needs to be readily available for recovery and for online reference information--as is the case for the AFCEE field-operating agency that provides Air Force leaders with the expertise to protect, preserve, restore, develop and sustain the United States' environmental and installation resources. BluPointe won the contract through a standard bid process 18 months ago, introducing Asigra's Televaulting software as a solution to the AFCEE's backup and archiving needs. As a result, AFCEE reduced the time it took to restore server data and applications, as well as install security patches, from a day-and-a-half to two-and-one-half hours.

"The agency is now able to maintain all of their generations of backups," says Ron Roberts, president of BluPointe. "If they got a virus yesterday, they could recover their backup from last Friday or last month to ensure the data is not corrupted."

In all, 2.5 TB of information is backed up from a network of 34 on-site computers accessing SQL Server databases. A backup to disk storage takes place at the data center in Brooks City, Texas, where it is then off-loaded to tape for archiving up to 50 years. In addition, the solution backs up a farm of laptops in San Francisco--needing only an IP connection. Down the road, the agency may turn to BluPointe to add its Exchange e-mail servers to the solution.

"Already, they had a critical server go down, only to be restored and back online in less than two hours," Roberts says.