Venture Capital Fund invests in Cloud Backup from Databarracks

The Company:   Advent Venture Partners - venture capital investors based in London.

The Challenge:   To improve unreliable and inefficient tape backups.

The Solution:   Databarracks was chosen to set up cloud backup with Asigra software and Virtual Disaster Recovery (VDR).

Advent Venture Partners is one of Europe's most successful growth and venture capital investors in market-leading tech and life sciences businesses.

Regulated by the Financial Services Authority, Advent Venture Partners has to comply with strict rules and legislation related to financial information and records. The company holds confidential intellectual property data and commercial information making secure backups an absolute necessity.

"Our most critical data is our Finance/Investment information ," says Paul Girling, Advent's Head of IT. "This includes all the facts and figures about our investments which are not only very important but also very sensitive.

"Our biggest concerns were the reliability of and the efficiency of tape backups. We used tapes for backup and a tape collection service to make sure our data was also stored off-site.  The situation wasn't ideal.  If we had a problem and needed a restore, we would either have to wait until the following day for our tape to be returned or pay for same-day delivery of the tapes."

Advent's location also makes the company vulnerable: "In addition to the usual worries about disk failure or corruption of databases, we are based in Central London, in close proximity to Buckingham Palace. It isn't uncommon for us to be denied access to the office because of incidents such as Security threats. The office and systems are fine but we aren't able to access them.  Our continuity-planning has to include in these occurrences too."

Mr Girling cautiously set about improving Advent's backup system: "Cloud backup was always going to be a better alternative, but we had to wait until the service had reached maturity and could do exactly what we wanted.

"During the selection process I saw countless different companies but I was never completely confident. There were always question marks over the software and the technology being used and I was never convinced it would work."

"It was quite a challenge to convince the partners here that this was the right route for us.  The business had been using tapes since before I arrived, so to move to something completely different was obviously quite a leap," admits Girling.

After meeting with Databarracks, any doubts about cloud back up were put to rest: "The functionality of the Asigra software is superb and the infrastructure is first-rate.

"A key part of the selection process for us was being able to visit the data centre and see that our information is being stored somewhere so secure and resilient.  There are a lot of similar services being hosted out of data centres in the middle of the city but that is a risk we didn't want to take," explains Girling.

Databarracks' hands-on approach during the initial setup process was also appreciated: "An engineer came to our site to collect our first backup and set us up.  Having the one-to-one contact with the engineer really helped and together we went through our different data restoration scenarios and retention needs.  We then designed all of the backup sets.  We were able to set it up exactly how we needed it rather than being limited by what the software would allow, " says Girling.

"Now, when we lose data, I have access to all the backups straight away and can have it restored in minutes. The backup system has really been tested. On several occasions we have had to make restores and roll-back the databases."

In the event of a complete disaster, Advent is able to restore its servers into Databarracks' Virtual Disaster Recovery environment using a bare-metal restore.  This allows staff to continue to operate from a temporary, cloud-hosted platform while the onsite problems are resolved.

"What has most impressed us is the standard of customer service we have received," reveals Girling. "Great technology is vital - but it counts for nothing if the service isn't good.  I have actually used Databarracks as an example of excellent customer service to other companies."