Proximity opts for Dantz Retrospect

Switching to Retrospect backup software from Dantz has helped leading marketing communications agency Proximity to simplify operations, allocate resources more flexibly and manage its critical disaster recovery data more effectively.
"Ease of use was a key differentiator of Retrospect for us," said Michael Curtis, Senior Systems Analyst at Proximity London. "Because of its intuitive interface, anyone within the Technology Services Group (TSG) can easily perform restore without previous back up experience. The ability to share this critical task frees up staff and allows them to use their time more effectively."
Part of the global BBDO network, Proximity London is a marketing communications agency with just under 300 employees. Digital information is critical to the business and in recent years the volume that Proximity needs to protect has grown enormously. It is currently almost approaching six terabytes a day. The importance of backing up has not been lost on the company.
Proximity switched to Retrospect when it upgraded its Windows servers. Before this the company had been managing backups with software from another vendor and came to recognise that this had a number of limitations as the data set began to grow. Proximity had become disillusioned and frustrated with the poor levels of support from other vendors.
When Proximity upgraded its Windows servers it took the opportunity to implement the latest version of Windows Retrospect, an advanced data backup solution from Dantz. It has subsequently upgraded twice to ensure it utilises the very latest capabilities of the software and is currently running version 6.5.
"The Mac specialists were more familiar with Retrospect Windows software having used the Retrospect Macintosh software earlier on Macintosh platforms but the Windows people soon bought into it when they saw its functionality and how simple it was to run," said Curtis.
Retrospect provides Proximity with a number of benefits. During backups an intuitive interface makes it easy for users to select the files and allocate tasks. Thousands of files stored on the company's Windows and Mac servers, desktops and laptops can be selected very quickly.
"Retrospect assumes you know nothing and guides you through the process step by step which eliminates errors in script writing," added Curtis. "Other solutions make assumptions or have default settings that may not be the default of your choice. For example, other solutions may assume that you are replacing a deleted file when in fact you may want to do a file comparison and hence you do not want to overwrite the original file."
Full backups take up to 12 hours to complete every night after which tapes are taken off site to Proximity's disaster recovery centre for security. A multi-tape option allows simultaneous backup of multiple hard drives. Retrospect also generates the scripts required to control the tape decks and executes them in parallel to ensure tasks are completed as quickly as possible. Proximity estimates that backup speeds for each script have run at 1.5Gb a minute. Unlike the previous application, retrospect makes it easy to find data in old back ups via its unique storage set file system without the need to have the physical tapes on site.
"This makes it much easier to find any information if we need to restore," says Michael Curtis. "In the event of hardware failure, we can be up and running in the shortest possible time.”
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