Penn Gaming Chooses EAGLE for LAN Free Backup Solution

Penn National Gaming, the third largest US public gaming company, is consistently
experiencing data growth from increased business, company growth and increased requirements for data retention and reporting. In addition, they face a real business need to keep their systems up 24x7.

"We were looking to add additional tiers of storage that could better benefit our
company," explained Jason Stump, Manager of IT Operations at Penn's Argosy
Casino in Alton, IL, where EAGLE Software assisted in implementing a customized
backup and archive solution which included CommVault Galaxy Software and a Xiotech 3D storage array.

EAGLE developed scripts and a program to allow Penn's Argosy Casino in
Alton, Illinois, to utilize their SAN (a XIOtech 3D) to implement a LAN-free/server-
less backup strategy. The benefit of this backup strategy was to eliminate the
impact of backups on production servers, free the LAN from traffic caused by
traditional client/server backups, and give the customer on-disk, point-in-time
backups. Significant cost savings were also realized by eliminating the need for
backup client software and/or open file managers for most production servers.

To implement LAN-free/server-less backups, a dedicated backup server, running
standard backup software, is connected to a tape library and the SAN where
production server disks are mirrored. During the day, the mirrors are "paused",
and a consistent image of the production data from the previous night is available
on the backup server for disaster recovery, most restore operations, as well
as data for testing and data mining. At 5:00 pm each day, a script runs on the
backup server that "resumes" the mirrors, copying only the blocks that were
changed since the previous night. At 7:00 pm, the script runs again to quiesce
each production server's data as needed, pause the mirrors with the data in a
consistent state, mount the copies on the backup server, and initiate a backup to
the tape library.

EAGLE wrote a special program to quiesce data on servers running Microsoft
SQL Server 2000. It utilizes Microsoft's SQL VDI (Virtual Device Interface),
which allows the mirrors to be paused in a consistent state without stopping SQL
or impacting applications using that data. This can also be done with Exchange
Server 2003, as well as other VSS "writers", on Windows Server 2003 utilizing
VSS (Virtual Shadow-copy Services).

"EAGLE Software has done a tremendous job supporting the solution that was
implemented," explained Stump. “EAGLE's technical team was available anytime
to assist any problems or questions that we had. EAGLE had the necessary
knowledge to complete our backup scripting with ease. I would definitely
recommend EAGLE to any company who had similar needs."

EAGLE distributes a full line of storage and backup and recovery products including tape library backup solutions, backup and recovery software packages, and SAN and NAS storage solutions. EAGLE also provides pre-sales evaluation and design, integration and support services.

For more information on EAGLE's products and services, contact: EAGLE Software, 123 Indiana Ave., Salina, KS 67401; Phone (800) 477-5432; Fax: (785) 823-6185; email: contact@totalbackups.com; website: http://www.totalbackups.com.

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