PML data centre and storage refresh
Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) is a charity, undertaking innovative, cutting-edge marine research, allowing society to benefit from clean, productive, biologically diverse seas now and for future generations.
Challenge
As part of a wider project to increase business resilience, PML explored a variety of technologies with Trustmarque to heighten its cyber security and business resilience. PML had a complex data management solution which was time-consuming and resource-intensive.
Gary Holder, Head of Information Technology Group at PML explains:
“If we are hit with a cyber security attack, we have to be sure of our ability to remediate ourselves. Engaging with Trustmarque has given us increased confidence about how such restoration can be delivered.”
Backups were split between operational backups and scientific backups, as well as intricacies around the workflows of PML which dictated what data to back up and when. They also had the added complexity around the rate of change for the data, as well as the format.
With workloads and resource constraints on the IT team, Gary was also looking for a fully-managed service in order to have total confidence that PML’s backups and data were in good hands:
“We wanted to replace our tape process and backup, and find a reliable, cloud-based alternative to efficiently safeguard and restore data.” Gary Holder, Head of Information Technology Group at PML
Solution
Having worked on previous scientific data backup projects with Trustmarque, PML began discussions around modernising their current offering. Following a detailed assessment of the legacy backup infrastructure, data management policies and compliance requirements, a single, secure and permanent data protection solution was proposed, tailored to the customer’s needs. Gary adds:
“A lot of that time was saved without reinventing the wheel, because Trustmarque already knew how our data worked. We’re able to focus on being more proactive when it comes to the whole backup disaster recovery scenario.”
The new solution is now also more environmentally friendly with a significantly reduced footprint, reducing PML’s energy consumption, meaning this money can be invested elsewhere.
Outcome
Having selected the ORIIUM and Commvault solution, PML’s crucial data is protected both locally and in the scalable, secure ORIIUM solution for disaster recovery purposes. The client can scale into the ORIIUM cloud in future as their requirements develop.
PML has a best of breed backup up with Commvault, overlaid with a great managed service from ORIIUM, with the ability to recover and access critical business systems and data at both the main and new DR site.
The overlaid Managed Services with ORIIUM removed the need for day-to-day management of the system and has freed up resources in the IT team. PML also have the confidence and support to successfully manage the process. The fully managed service includes design and deployment into the environment, assistance with migration planning, 24x7x365 job and alert monitoring, issue management, proactive resolution, content changes, and professional engineer assistance during a restore or DR recovery event.
This also provides immutable copies at the secondary site to protect from ransomware. Looking back on the project, Gary adds:
“Over the years we have invested in wireless, switching, storage and virtualisation – but this project with Trustmarque is probably one of our most successful projects to date. We have had excellent support from the start.”
Why Trustmarque?
We are experts in building an environment of innovation for complex datacentre, virtual private cloud and managed cloud projects. We tap into our datacentre partner network to discover emerging technology to deliver solutions with an impact on citizens and communities. Our highly accredited datacentre and cloud teams are masters at successfully designing, building, deploying, and managing cloud solutions in the public sector and corporate space.
