Pret A Manger
Pret A Manger cooks up a new recipe for improved backup and recovery
Pret A Manger has about 150 Pret shops at the moment. With this rapid growth, it was no surprise that Pret had to consider the amount of increased data transacting between branches prompting a re-examination of its’ data management and protection processes. At Pret HQ it has 25 Microsoft 2000 servers, each storing and managing about 500GB of information. Each Prêt store has a dedicated point-to-point line connecting it to headquarters and the servers. Pret A Manger were looking to:
- centralise backup and recovery; particularly for HR information, email and some sales data held at each outlet
- increase backup and restore speeds
- streamline administration
- migrate from tape-storage to disk-based storage
- enable effective back-up to a co-location site to deliver disaster recovery.
Pret’s data growth created three primary IT objectives related to backup and recovery:
- Nightly backup required improvement as backup windows were being encroached by the growing data volumes – leading to some data not being backed up each night.
- Non-sales data stored remotely at individual stores needed to be stored and backed up centrally to prevent this data being lost.
- And disaster recovery processes had to be implemented by having backups electronically sent to a second co-location facility.
Solution
- A backup and recovery procedure was designed and implemented by 2e2 which enables data and software to regularly and securely be backed up and then stored to ensure that loss of data doesn't occur in the event of a disaster such as hardware failure.
- Pret A Manger recognised that replication of software was expensive and bandwidth-intensive and so explored other options. After evaluating other backup and recovery software, Pret selected EVault InfoStage online backup software and worked with 2e2 as the storage specialist on the implementation.
- Following the installation and training period, EVault InfoStage delivered the centralisation of backup of Pret’s stores as well as being able to easily backup to a second site to deliver disaster recovery without incurring additional complexity and cost.
- Servers in New York and Hong Kong – where the company has 10 and six stores respectively – are also backed up to the London headquarters via a virtual private network using InfoStage, providing a single, global backup strategy.
- Pret A Manger were able to use existing infrastructure to get data offsite quickly to the co-location site without an elaborate staging process.
- Each night, InfoStage streamlines processes by providing backups from the Windows 2000 servers to storage arrays at Pret’s headquarters and the co-location site simultaneously so that both exactly reflect the other – critical in the event of a restoration of data being required.
- The automated nature of online backup means that management of backup and restore can be started in just a few seconds. This was in stark contrast to Hicks’ previous experience of having to locate and mount tapes, then search for the data and hope the integrity of the media was good enough to deliver the required data.
Business Advantage
‘The project has significantly simplified our data management process. Backup of data from London, New York, Hong Kong and all our UK stores happens seamlessly to our London headquarters and our co-location facilities,’ says Hicks.
- Streamlined disaster recovery process and improved resource management.
- Today, data is stored and backed up daily, delivering end to end disaster recover, and diminishing and the risk of data losses.
- Admin time has been slashed and back-up and recovery times significantly reduced.
Online backup is much faster and we have been able to eliminate the time spent previously on tape management and minimise the administrative errors inherent in this process.
