Höganäs reduces its backup window by more than 95 percent

To read a Swedish version of this case study, please click here.

Höganäs AB has its headquarters in the town of Höganäs in north-west Skåne County, Sweden. Founded in 1797, the company today employs just over 1,600 people across 15 countries. Twelve production plants produce the dust iron and metal powder products that have made Höganäs a world-leader in metal powder technology. Höganäs produces high-quality products and develops new applications for metal powder in collaboration with customers worldwide.

The data security challenge
Höganäs was concerned that its backup and recovery procedures were not sufficiently robust to support the company’s business-critical systems. In particular, the recent centralisation of key ERP systems to Höganäs’ Swedish headquarters made it necessary to rapidly address the issue of backup at the company.

“To maintain business continuity it was crucial that we had the infrastructure in place to recover mission-critical data in the event of a systems outage,” said Peter Blomgren, CIO, Höganäs. “However, the timeframe for backup with our previous solution was more than 24 hours, and recovering more than 80 VMware servers from tape would have taken even longer. Both the backup and the recovery process needed to be significantly streamlined to enable us to restore normal operations quickly without incurring major downtime and loss of data.”

In addition, Höganäs felt that its previous backup solution was not delivering good value for money. “Backup processes required a high degree of administrative input from our IT staff,” said Blomgren. “What’s more, backup reliability levels were low and did not correspond acceptably with the licensing costs we were paying.”

With 17 terabytes of stored data and a growing storage landscape, Höganäs also required a backup solution that would provide the necessary scalability to handle increasing data volumes in the future.

Selecting IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Fastback
After considering a number of options, Höganäs decided to implement IBM^® Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack^®. Höganäs asked IBM Business Partner H2O Data to carry out a proof-of-concept to test the efficiency of the new backup process, the results of which convinced the company to opt for the IBM solution.

“When compared to alternative solutions, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack offered the most appealing package,” said Blomgren. “The solution runs well with our existing infrastructure and provides the scalability we will need as our server and storage landscapes continue to grow.

“We had already successfully collaborated with IBM before on other projects and we have been impressed with the level of support we have received from both IBM and H2O Data during the Tivoli^® FastBack implementation process,” said Blomgren. “The H2O Data team has considerable expertise in this kind of solution, and have also allowed us to leverage their own data centre as a disaster recovery site.”

With the implementation of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack, Höganäs’ backup process has been entirely transformed. Instead of moving data directly to tape, H2O Data helped Höganäs connect more than 80 existing VMware ESXi servers to three IBM System x^® 3650 M2 servers running the Tivoli software. These servers now collectively handle all backup processes by moving snapshots of each virtual server onto an IBM System Storage DS3200 disk system.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack has enabled Höganäs to perform backups incrementally – only copying new or changed data instead of performing a full backup each time. Once a day, this data is also replicated to a second DS3200 at the H2O Data site in Malmö, using the FastBack Disaster Recovery replication function over a high-speed internet link.

“With IBM Tivoli FastBack we have been able to create a full disaster recovery capability in the town of Malmö,” said Blomgren. “If storage systems at our own data centre were to fail, we could now potentially run our key systems direct from Malmö over an internet connection.”

The company currently keeps the 24 most recent generations of its backup data on the disk systems. Earlier generations of backup data are moved onto tape and, in the long-term, will be retained in an IBM Tape Library. Recovery procedures are tested every two weeks by H2O Data staff.

In addition to the company’s vital ERP systems, its Microsoft Exchange email servers are also business-critical for Höganäs staff. Tivoli Storage Manager’s FastBack for Exchange function helps to safeguard these systems by providing continuous data protection for Microsoft Exchange environments.

“Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Exchange can restore entire mailboxes or even just individual items such as emails and calendar entries,” said Blomgren. “Users who are prone to accidently erasing emails are particularly pleased with this function.”

Closing the backup window
The implementation of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack has greatly reduced vulnerability to prolonged downtime at Höganäs’ Swedish headquarters, thus significantly decreasing the risk of disrupted business operations.

“Tivoli Fastback has reduced our backup window from over a day to well under an hour,” said Blomgren. “The solution can also restore applications in a matter of minutes. In the event of a system failure, our users will be able to get back to work more quickly with the applications they need. We will even be able to continue running our systems from the disaster site while data is restored to the main site in the background.”

The implementation of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack has streamlined Höganäs’ backup processes. Its backup environment is now almost entirely disk-based, reducing the need to purchase and manage physical tape storage. In addition, the use of both the local data centre and an off-site facility has maximised the protection of key data.

“From a financial standpoint Tivoli FastBack is proving to be a cost-effective solution,” said Blomgren. “Licensing costs are no higher than they were for our previous solution, but levels of security and reliability have improved a lot. Consequently we are getting much better value for money.”

“As an additional benefit, our technical specialists have commented that backup administration is now much easier to manage. As a result, our IT staff who used to work on backup have become more productive in other, more business-oriented areas.”

The successful introduction of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack to Höganäs’ Swedish headquarters has led to plans to roll out the solution to other Höganäs plants and offices. In addition, the company is planning to carry out a proof-of-concept for its Belgian site, with a view to eventually rolling out Tivoli FastBack to all global sites within the Höganäs group.