Global studio firm Pinewood Studios Group, whose facilities have been used to create blockbusters such as Skyfall, has selected virtualisation management solution provider Veeam's back-up software to save time and ensure that their data is backed up.
The group is headquartered in Iver Health, England with 250 employees worldwide, and its facilities are used by more than 15,000 international production companies to create TV shows and films including Doctor Who, The Apprentice (pictured), and Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.
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Pinewood's group IT manager, John Chase, told Computing that the IT team decided to move from physical to virtual machines (VMs) and employed IT solutions provider Codestone to help with the process.
Codestone migrated the firm's applications and data from 14 physical servers to three VMware vSphere hosts running 30 Windows VMs. It then needed to look for a new backup solution to complement the virtualised environment.
"We had three requirements: ease of use, low maintenance and replication. Codestone suggested Veeam Essentials to us, which we looked into and it looked like it fitted in perfectly for what we wanted to do," Chase said.
Chase explained that other offerings were not looked at directly by Pinewood and it did not enter a full tender process.
"We went with [Codestone's] expertise on this and as the price point was really good, and as it was simple to use, we didn't feel it necessary to look elsewhere," he said.
Chase said that the firm used various LTO tape vendors with Symantec Back-up Exec, and although Symantec's product did not have any issues, Pinewood Studios Group had a problem with physical tapes, as it meant that the IT team had to rely on other members of staff that worked on different sites.
"We were relying on non-IT members of staff to change tape back-ups, and they had to walk across to the other side to swap tapes. Remembering to do it was a big problem when someone was ill, and there was always a concern that the tapes weren't getting changed and that if we had to do a restore there was nothing to restore," he said.
Veeam Essentials has resulted in other members of staff saving time, and made it easier for the IT team to manage the back-up.
"We save a lot of hours a week just by putting in this solution. Prior to Veeam, restoring an Microsoft Exchange mailbox could take the whole day and now it takes minutes," Chase said.
"Previously, when we were backing up physical servers to tape three team members would spend approximately five hours each week overseeing the back-up-to-tape process, as well as retrieving and reviewing tapes when an item needed to be recovered. We're now saving at least 15 hours each week with Veeam as a result of faster backup and recovery. The main thing is the peace of mind that it is working as we get e-mail notifications that the [back up] job is completed. With physical tapes there was always the worry in the back of your mind that it wasn't successful and sometimes the tapes could fail," Chase said.
He went on to claim that there were no challenges on implementation, and that it was a simple case of understanding how to move servers to different jobs, with minimal training required. So far, he said, there have been no issues with the software.
"The IT and support teams all monitor the back-up solution and it is very rare that it fails, and if it does fail, it is because of a VM rather than Veeam," he added.
For the future, the firm is interested in installing the Veeam ONE solution as Chase believes the software has monitoring and security capabilities that would be beneficial to the company.
