Chicago Teachers Pension Fund

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Problem: The Chicago Teachers Pension Fund had backup and restore needs that included 5 servers that contained their most important production data which could be  restored in case of a disaster or production failure. The data backed up includes 3.7 million imaging documents, SQL backups and file server documents.  They had problems with lost tapes, bad tapes, and the amount of time needed to back up this large amount of data to tape.

The Chicago Teachers Pension Fund (CTPF) was founded back in 1895 by decree of the Legislature of Illinois. Over 112 years it has grown to include over 58,000 active, inactive, and retired members and takes great pride in never missing a monthly pension check, weathering many historic events that challenged the entire nation.

In the past the CTPF used Veritas Backup Exec for their data backup and restore needs. They previously suffered from the effects of lost tapes, bad tapes, and the time needed to backup to tape over 250 GB’s of data from 7 servers.

Don Adams, the CTPF’s Network System Administrator, needed a solution for disaster recovery as well as resolving the growing problem CTPF was having with backup needs and methods. The solution decided upon needed to be “fast, reliable, secure, and cost-effective., with quick file recovery and security of data being the main concerns.”

When asked about his experiences with DS3, Don responded with the following anecdote: “Recently, CTPF lost an array that housed the images.  CTPF received a backup hard drive with all the data within 48 hours.  Functionality was returned to the system within 24 hours of receiving that data.  With that amount of data, 24-48 was an acceptable amount of time.  CTPF used part of our DR processes for those 24-48 hours that allowed the staff to still view the images necessary.  Functionality was returned within 72 hours. DS3 sales and technical support was and is helpful and knowledgeable.  I would recommend DS3 Vaulting Services for production data and secure off-site backup.”

Don Adams
Network System Administrator
Chicago Teachers Pension Fund

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