Memorandum 11-027 Backup Software for City Hall Server

MEMORANDUM 11-027

TO: CITY MANAGER WREDE

FROM: STEVE BAMBAKIDIS, SYSTEMS MANAGER

DATE: FEBRUARY 23, 2011

SUBJECT: BACKUP SOFTWARE FOR CITY HALL

The City of Homer has employed Symantec Backup Exec Software over the past 10 years to manage, backup and restore all City documents, databases, emails, and user information on all City of Homer Servers. The revision of software that we had been running up to this point is version 10D, which was dated from 2004. The model of licensing of the software required a license for each resource that was being backed up e.g. if we were backing up a total of 3 Microsoft SQL databases, we would need 3 Symantec ‘Agent for SQL’ backup licenses. At the time, we paid over 10,000 for the software, and it has served us well, and there has been little impetus to upgrade the software since it worked for our purposes. However, over the past year, as we have upgraded other components of our IT system, such as installing a new Microsoft Windows 2008 Server with SQL 2008R2 for Clarity, the backup software has been unable to backup these ‘newer’ resources since the technology used for the newer resources is dramatically different. As a result, there have been some ‘holes’ in our backup strategy which, though we have worked around them, have not given us the same level of security and safeguards that we had prior.

The IT department proposes therefore upgrading our Backup Exec Software to the latest version, as well as all applicable Agent Licenses, which would put us on Symantec Backup Exec 2010.
Notably, this upgrade would allow us to:

• Backup all resources automatically, and put into place policies which would notify IT staff of any errors detected in backup jobs
• Allow us to backup and seamlessly restore all Microsoft SQL databases (Clarity, CMI, Blackberry Services),Oracle Databases, and Microsoft Exchange Email Services
• Allow us to backup and seamlessly restore all VoIP Phone servers (used for all incoming and outgoing telephone communications)
• Enable a higher level of monitoring of backup progress, and granular restoration (e.g. be able to restore a single email in a single users inbox, as opposed to a whole inbox)
• Allow files to be backed up on newer resources even if they are open or in use (e.g. if a word document is open on a users computer overnight, it will still get backed up)
• Allow up to 60% faster backups vs. the older version (a complete backup job of all resources on the old system would begin on Friday at 5PM and end on Monday at 7AM). In testing, the newer system began at 5PM and would be done by Saturday 11PM.
• Faster restoration of any all data using Hard Disk based backup vs. older DAT or DLT tape backups which have limited storage and lifetime usability (tape gets stretched over time, hard disks do not, and there is more storage capacity available on a hard disk)
• Allow access to support from Symantec if there are any problems with the software. Currently since the software is out of support, we are on our own if something does not work correctly.