Network Communications News (NCN) May 2017 | Page 21

HOT TOPIC
A case in point:
The Craig Group
The Craig Group operates the
largest British wholly owned
fleet engaged in the UK offshore
industry, providing shipping and
energy services worldwide. The
IT department might have one of
the toughest jobs in IT; a team of
six are responsible for keeping 31
vessels, eight offices and more
than 1,000 people both on and
offshore working and connected.
Between them, they use more
than 30 applications across 80
servers. Communication across
land and sea is possible thanks
to a complex network – and
downtime can be both expensive
and dangerous.
Although Craig Group had a
business continuity and disaster
recovery strategy in place, the
traditional tape method of back
up wasn’t working for its business
any longer. Like many companies,
Craig Group was using a mix of
vendors to fulfil its back up needs,
which did not provide the solution
it was looking for.
Onshore, at eight offices located
worldwide, tape back up could
only be taken once a day meaning
Craig Group could potentially lose
a whole day’s data in the event of
an IT systems failure.
In addition, Craig Group
operates 31 vessels predominantly
in the North Sea. These vessels
are a mix of platform supply and
emergency response and rescue
vessels, (ERRVs), providing
essential support to oil and gas
assets in the region. Each ship
employs approximately 12 to 15
crew and all ERRVs are at sea
for 28 days at a time. On board,
they rely on a server to run
maintenance databases, email and
print services. These are backed
up to an external hard drive, which
previously had to be loaded to
tape when the vessel landed
ashore at the end of a trip.
This meant that when an
offshore server failed, a ship would
be reduced to functioning on just
laptops. Additionally, it was difficult
for the onshore team to know this
had occurred. Checking in to a
fleet of 31 ships in the North Sea is
complex and time consuming.
As a result, Craig Group was
seeking an upgrade. The vision
was one simplified solution, a
‘single pane of glass’ that could
manage the Group’s back up
environment at both on and
offshore locations. It wasn’t until
Aberdeen based ITWORX met with
the IT department that an ‘elegant’
solution came into focus. ITWORX
understood the vision of the client
and demonstrated that the Datto
product range could meet the
diverse demands of the Group.
IT WO RX a nd C ra i g G ro u p ra n
ex te ns ive te s t s to d e m o n st rate
t h at t h e new p ro d u ct s we re f i t
fo r p u r p o s e . Tr ial s e sta b l i sh e d
t h at b a c k u p s co u l d b e ta ke n
eve r y t h re e h o u r s, w h i c h
wo u l d l owe r C ra i g G ro u p ’ s R P O
(Re cove r y Po int Ob j e ct i ve) a n d
im p rove tota l re s i l i e n c e .
As Craig Group operates
internationally from different
locations, email is the primary
business conduit. Speed of
response for communicating with
a ship or tendering and quoting
contract renewals can be crucial
to the triumph of the business
and values can be in millions –
downtime could be very significant.
Post deployment, although
server failures can still be
problematic, the new technology
has significantly improved overall
resilience, method of operation
and recovery of data. Almost
immediately after putting the
first device onto one of the ships,
there was a server failure, just
one week into a 28-day trip. The
vessel was off the coast of Africa
and inaccessible. Previously this
server issue would have been hard
to manage; in this instance, Craig
Group could run off a virtualisation
for three weeks.
Failures are not just exclusive
to harsh weather and working
conditions. An incumbent cloud
provider to the land based HQ
experienced service provision
issues. Although the new recovery
products were not the contracted
solution for this onshore facility,
it had become the operational
benchmark expected of the IT
department. Waiting hours for
‘The
devastating
effect of
downtime
caused by
disasters
includes
irreparable
damage
to data,
reputation,
customer
relationships,
income, and
business
vitality.’
little sign of any recovery was
unacceptable, and so the new
recovery solution was invoked.
One hour later, HQ was back to
running as normal.
The significant difference
is that a ‘prevention not cure’
culture endures. Although less
administration time is spent on a
scheduled failover rotation, the
Craig Group can ensure that each
of the recovery devices are tested
regularly – on ‘Failover Fridays’.
Disaster planning must
encompass disasters of all types
and sizes: fires, floods, fraud,
ransomware, cyber attacks, power
or IT system failure, human error,
and other unthinkable scenarios.
While the type of disaster varies,
the impact is typical: data loss
and operational downtime. The
devastating effect of downtime
caused by disasters includes
irreparable damage to data,
reputation, customer relationships,
income, and business vitality.
For organisations like The
Craig Group, the best offense is a
good defence; you must protect
your business by understanding
your vulnerabilities, safeguarding
against the risks, and preparing
for the worst business disruptions
with a plan for business continuity
and disaster recovery that will
shield data, protect the business,
and keep systems available and
reliable no matter what happens.
With the appropriate planning
and technologies in place, the risk
posed to businesses by system,
natural or human error disasters
can be drastically mitigated. Data
back up is the crucial last line of
defence, ensuring that, even in
the event of catastrophic events,
organisations can spin up systems
and restore their data – often in a
matter of minutes – enabling them
to continue functioning almost as
normal in the face of adversity.
May 2017 | 21