Case Study: Nasa Federal Credit Union

NASA Federal Credit Union launches online data protection

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Chartered in 1949, NASA Federal Credit Union (FCU) serves the diverse needs of 65,000 members worldwide with a full array of financial services and more than $700 million in assets.

For years, the credit union relied on a tape-based process to backup its critical corporate and customer data. Each day, data was saved to series of eight backup tapes (about 1 terabyte of data), which had to be labeled, tracked, and then transported off-site. On top of that, invoices and lists had to be created to document each tape’s journey between headquarters and the off-site storage location. This manual process involved several IT administrators, and consumed about two hours of time each day.

“It was a labor-intensive process to keep those tapes in order, and while the information being shuttled back and forth was secured in a locked box, it was not encrypted,” said Tim Burch, Vice President Technology Services, NASA Federal Credit Union. The credit union also ran into the issue of space on each tape as the amount of backup data continued to grow—requiring the organization to purchase more tape drives and compression software. “We just had to find a better solution,” said Burch.

EVault automates backup tasks

To better protect its members’ privacy and to streamline operations within the IT department, the group decided to move away from tape backup and explore online data backup options. After researching the leading online backup providers, they found only EVault Data Protection offered the option to license its online backup software, enabling NASA FCU to continue managing its backup process in house.

“EVault came in and gave us a demo—and we were really impressed,” said Burch. “Now, all of our data is backed up by EVault technology.”

Since June 2005, the credit union has relied on EVault Software to backup, recover and restore critical data—from the credit union’s customer data to its employee payroll and Microsoft Exchange email servers. EVault’s automated, disk-to-disk backup solution helps eliminate labor-intensive manual tasks, and reduces the chance of human error associated with tape-based processes.

All 40 servers located at NASA FCU’s corporate offices in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, are backed up daily, while critical SQL server databases are backed up on the hour. For added assurance, a copy of all executed backups is transmitted to the credit union’s Columbia branch, 30 miles away.

Compression reduces bandwidth requirements and storage

The credit union backs up approximately one terabyte (TB) of data, however, EVault’s DeltaPro™ advanced compression and delta-processing technology allows for shorter backup windows and significantly reduces the amount of data required for transmission to the backup server—while still enabling a full restore from any point in time. Data remains compressed throughout the online transmission and while stored in the electronic vault, optimizing bandwidth usage and reducing client storage costs. By reducing the amounts of data required for transmission, storage volumes on the backup server or array grow more slowly, so additional disk space is required less frequently.

“A big part of our decision was how fast our backups would travel to our hot site, and we didn’t want to spend a lot of money increasing our bandwidth to reach branch offices as we moved to online backup,” said Burch. “EVault’s compression tool provided a big advantage in that respect.”

In addition to its optimized compression technology, EVault’s data protection solutions are also designed for maximum data security—a critical component of any regulatory compliance program.

Improved security and compliance

End-to-end security is achieved by encrypting data at the server site, while in transit during the backup, and when at rest in the storage vault. Backup and restore operations must be authorized and authenticated before data transfer can commence, and all backups and restores are tracked in detailed logs.

“We have increasing regulation attached to protecting member data, and beyond just backing up the data electronically, we also needed a solution that provided encryption for information stored off-site,” said Burch. “EVault provides this added layer of security.”

Although the department has been fortunate to not have undergone a major data restore to date, they’ve found the task of restoring individual files and exchange mailboxes to be simple and straightforward—with a few clicks of the mouse.

Conclusion

“We’ve been thrilled with the technology from EVault,” said Burch. “It’s a good fit for our company and has saved us a tremendous amount of time and headache.”