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New Star beefs up disaster recovery
Case study: Protecting vital email service

By Tim Ferguson

Published: Friday 15 December 2006

Fund manager New Star Asset Management has beefed up its disaster recovery system at four international locations to protect its email service.

The company is replicating Microsoft Exchange data between its Knightsbridge office and its disaster recovery site in Docklands, using software from SteelEye Technology. It has also added email replication to the disaster recovery site from its offices in Dublin and from Bermuda, which was completed in August.

Charles Hornung, director of IT at New Star, said that diary and contact services were actually more important for business than email itself and so it was essential to maintain access to these at all times.

If the main server in any of the company's offices has a problem the software will allow the backup server to take over the reins, allowing the email system to return to operation with the minimum of fuss.

Hornung told silicon.com that during demos of the system his team felt that LifeKeeper offered the "better functionality for a live failover" compared to the other options under consideration.

He added that he made sure the team conducted his acid test for business continuity - and pulled out "all the wires".

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The system was rolled out in two stages. The firm's London office was the first location to go live more than six months ago, while the remote locations in Dublin and Bermuda have followed more recently.

The LifeKeeper for Exchange and Data software has also been put through its paces as part of New Star’s annual full disaster recovery simulation.

Hornung said the introduction of the failover software now means that he and the staff have no need to worry about loss of information or communication as the result of a server failure, and can work in the knowledge that "it won't be five minutes before they have a working solution".