THE PLYMOUTH ROCK GROUP OF COMPANIES
Insurance group strengthens replication ability with EMC’s
integrated, virtualized recovery solution
The Plymouth Rock Group of Companies is the marketing name for a group of separate
companies that writes and manages more than $1 billion in personal and commercial auto
and homeowner’s insurance in the Northeast. The group of companies includes Shared
Technology Services Group Inc. (STG), which identifies, develops, and maintains technology
solutions for the other companies in the group.
ESSENTIALS
Challenges
• Strengthen business continuity
infrastructure against potential data
corruption and/or viruses
• Potential recovery point objective of 24
hours
Solutions
• EMC unified storage
• EMC RecoverPoint Continuous Remote
Replication (CRR)
• VMware vSphere
• VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM)
Key benefits
• Fast, integrated recovery of storage and
virtual machines
• Consistent database recovery achieved in
30 minutes
• 24-hour recovery point objective slashed
to two minutes
• Flexible options for two-way replication
The businesses demand uninterrupted access to data and services, so STG replicates its
critical databases and applications between data centers in two different states. A few years
ago, STG identified a potential improvement to its business continuity strategy.
“We strengthened our position against potential problems that all companies face, such as
data corruption and viruses, because we can now go back to a specific point in time that
preceded the problem at the disaster recovery site,” says Troy Wood, storage supervisor for
STG.
“Previously, in the unlikely event that a virus brought down our critical systems, we would
have to recover clean data from the previous night’s tape backup. We could potentially lose
up to a day’s worth of new data and transactions, and it could be one to two days before
we’d be able to restore our systems.”
FULL PROTECTION FOR VIRTUALIZED INFRASTRUCTURE
To strengthen its disaster recovery abilities, STG evaluated EMC® RecoverPoint and other
major vendor products similar to RecoverPoint. Ultimately, STG replaced its EMC SRDF®
solution with EMC RecoverPoint Continuous Remote Replication (CRR) because it supported
point-in-time recovery, automated failover, and virtualized environments.
Today, RecoverPoint provides STG with two-way replication between its two data centers,
which both function as production and disaster recovery sites for the group of companies.
RecoverPoint protects STG’s Microsoft SQL Server and IBM DB2 databases and applications,
such as accounting, policy and billing systems, claims administration, agency management,
and IBM WebSphere.
The servers running applications and databases protected by RecoverPoint are virtualized
with VMware® vSphere™ and are stored on EMC unified storage systems at both sites.
In addition to replicating storage, RecoverPoint operates in conjunction with VMware Site
Recovery Manager (SRM) for failover of STG’s VMware virtual machines.
EMC Global Services assisted STG with design and implementation of RecoverPoint and
customizing the solution to its environment.
“I recommend EMC Global Services,” says Wood. “They helped us get where we wanted to go
with RecoverPoint much more quickly. And we’re very pleased with how the implementation
turned out.”
Customer Profile
“RecoverPoint, SRM, VMware, and EMC storage all play well together and create a
strong integrated solution. It’s been a winning infrastructure all around because
we’re operating more efficiently and reliably and with increased agility.”
Troy Wood
Storage Supervisor, STG
STREAMLINED DISASTER RECOVERY ADMINISTRATION
RecoverPoint and VMware SRM provide automation of disaster recovery tasks, which has
contributed to increased IT efficiency.
“RecoverPoint has significantly streamlined management of disaster recovery activities,
which before involved a lot of manual work,” says Wood. “Thanks to the tight integration
between RecoverPoint and VMware’s SRM, we have the ability to recover our data and virtual
servers hundreds of miles away more quickly—with just a few clicks.”
STG also finds that RecoverPoint is easy to use. For example, RecoverPoint provides a
consistent experience of the same server name and IP address regardless of which site is
serving as the source or target.
FLEXIBLE, AUTOMATED RECOVERY OPTIONS
Using RecoverPoint, STG creates consistency groups to maintain transactional consistency
within and across applications and databases.
“In a recovery situation,” Wood explains, “we could choose our point-in-time for recovering
application consistency groups one at a time or all at once. Then, RecoverPoint would kick in
and do all of the failover work for us. RecoverPoint provides a level of granularity we just
didn’t see in the other solutions.”
Wood adds, “The replication is totally transparent and the virtual server is contained in the
storage and the same consistency group. So our SQL databases and everything are moved
over in a completely consistent state and any necessary recovery can be clean and
error-free.”
SUPPORTING PRODUCTIVE PROTECTION
RecoverPoint’s flexibility was put to the test when STG needed to repurpose server hardware
at the primary data center. To accomplish this, STG restored virtual servers from the primary
site to the remote site.
“We did not have production hardware set up at a primary site for virtual servers supporting
our policy system. We did, however, have the hardware in the remote site, so we built the
virtual server in the remote site, replicated it to the primary site with RecoverPoint, and
failed the virtual server over to its permanent home when the hardware in the primary site
was ready. It was a fantastic, practical use of the technology when we had to meet a
deadline.”
INTEGRATED INFRASTRUCTURE ENABLES INCREASED
AGILITY AND EFFICIENCY
Because the Plymouth Rock Group’s business continues to grow at a rapid pace,
RecoverPoint’s scalability has been valuable.
Originally replicating 16 terabytes, the RecoverPoint configuration was expanded with
additional nodes to handle 54 terabytes, and recently was expanded again to support 70
terabytes.
“Increasing replication capacity in our production environment with RecoverPoint is
simple,” says Wood. “With a flexible node model, we can easily transition in and out of
multiple nodes while maintaining the same cluster.”
The tight integration among RecoverPoint, EMC storage, and VMware also has contributed to
increased flexibility for STG and the Plymouth Rock Group of Companies.
“RecoverPoint, SRM, VMware, and EMC storage all play well together and create a strong
integrated solution. It’s been a winning infrastructure all around because we’re operating
more efficiently and reliably and with increased agility,” Wood concludes.
Contact Us
To learn more about how EMC products,
services, and solutions can help solve your
business and IT challenges, contact your
local representative or authorized reseller,
or visit us at www.EMC.com.
EMC2, EMC, SRDF, and the EMC logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other
countries. VMware and vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other
jurisdictions. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. © Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All
rights reserved. Published in the USA. 12/11 Customer Profile H9553
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