MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwire -08/15/12)- Symantec Corp. (SYMC) today announced that the Gynecological Oncology Group's Statistical and Data Center (GOG SDC), one of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) funded cooperative cancer research groups, now has 30 times more backup capacity efficiency and combined protection across physical and virtual environments. Symantec Backup Exec 2012's new user interface lets GOG SDC easily set up and configure backups across physical and virtual machines, deduplicate the backups, and convert physical server backups to VMware or Hyper-V virtual machines for instant recovery.
Click to Tweet: Cancer research group GOG SDC modernizes #vmware backup & recovery with @Symantec's @BackupExec 2012: http://bit.ly/NvOhnT
"The newest version of Backup Exec delivers confidence in our mixed physical and virtual environment. We can restore data to either platform, and the improved management interface has helped cut tape management to less than 10 minutes a day," said Scott Gould, GOG senior network and systems analyst. "This is a valuable efficiency that lets the GOG spend more time on our core purpose: curing cancer through clinical trials."
The GOG has conducted more than 700 clinical trials related to gynecological cancers since its founding in 1970. More than 10,000 GOG members at 700 institutions collaborate on GOG's clinical trial protocol design and data collection.
"Our data center is all about cancer research, a mission as rewarding as it is critical," Gould said. "We must deploy the best methods to protect the critical information that comes through the GOG, and every penny saved through increased storage efficiency frees up more money for discovering a cure. At the same time, we require simple management and Backup Exec 2012 is the most flexible and unified platform we've seen."
The GOG SDC runs a cluster of four virtual hosts running around 40 VMware machines -- servers running a variety of databases and statistical analysis packages -- and a 10-terabyte storage area network (SAN). Their previous backup system wasn't able to handle the mixed physical and virtual systems efficiently. In early 2012, Gould and the GOG SDC team participated in beta testing for Backup Exec 2012 V-Ray Edition. As a result, Gould decided to acquire a high-performance backup server and dedicated disk storage for backup data, and deployed the beta software on production data in the SDC.
Backup Exec 2012 also maximized deduplication efficiency. The SDC reduced 104,000 gigabytes of backup data into one 3,500-gigabyte deduplicated storage folder. "We're very impressed with the deduplication capabilities of Backup Exec, which have dramatically reduced storage requirements -- saving us valuable time and money," said Gould.