“With the DD460 from Data Domain, we’ve been able to compress and store two to three months of backup data onsite. We’ve cut costs and reduced our reliance on offsite tape storage, and we can back up and restore data at incredible speeds. Best of all, we can easily verify the security and integrity of our data. We’re very pleased — the DD460 is everything we’d hoped for.” — Ephraim Baron
IT Director
EFI
American Insurance Services Agency

When Traditional Disaster Recovery is Not Enough

American Insurance Services Agency is a property and casualty insurance agency serving both businesses and individuals throughout the state of New Jersey.

When American Insurance founder Nick San Filippo realized that his company did not have the right level of protection it needed to keep doing business in the event of a disaster, he invested in Data Domain to achieve close to total business continuity. Data Domain enabled American Insurance to deduplicate and instantly replicate the data, applications and operating systems needed to stay in business to a remote site, and worked with American Insurance to develop a custom solution for agents to access the remote system via a virtual network to maintain business continuity in the event of disaster. The solution was simple to deploy and worked out so well that San Filippo formed a new company, Bare Metal Solutions, to offer the same level of protection to other insurance agencies.

Customer Challenges

Many insurance agencies think they are protecting their businesses against disaster, but Nick San Filippo of American Insurance Services Agency says that while these agencies may be spending thousands of dollars a month to protect their data, they are actually not protected in a fashion that realistically maps to their true business continuity needs.

“My business is worth millions of dollars,” San Filippo explains. “If I cannot recover immediately from a system interruption, I literally have a disaster on my hands and I am losing customers and dollars every hour that goes by. If I can’t service my customers, they will go somewhere else. For agencies like mine, seamless business continuity is key. I must to be able to reach my database at all times.”

Most agencies have business interruption insurance, but this only pays for lost revenue and the cost to get back up and running. It does not reimburse the agency for lost customers.

So rapid disaster recovery is essential, but San Filippo points out that agencies only backing up data to tape will not be able to recover fast enough to preserve their customer base.

“Data is critical in the insurance business, but unless you can keep that data working at all times, it is absolutely useless,” he continues. “Insurance agencies typically have a hodgepodge of software programs to help make the agency run. If there is a disaster, even if you have a tape off-site with all your data, the actual hardware, applications, security, passwords, codes, and integration you need to run your business is gone. To put it simply: what will you put the tape into? How are you going to restore the tapes? Without the programs, the tapes will not help you. If your system is down, how long do you think it will take you to get back to the point where you can serve your customers? In the interim, you are essentially out of business.”

“In the end, for an insurance agency, even a problem that is as simple as a power outage can evolve into a disaster quite quickly,” adds San Filippo. “It’s not a question of the type of interruption, but the duration of time that elapses where you cannot access your data. In our business, you don’t have to have an earthquake to literally have a disaster on your hands.”

American Insurance has a completely paperless environment, relying entirely on electronic data. Like most agencies, American Insurance was also backing up its data to tape, until San Filippo realized that his company was not fully protected. That’s when he turned to Data Domain.

Data Domain Solution

“American Insurance has 20 people in our office, all working off the network,” San Filippo says. “If the building burns down, there is no place for my staff to log in, but if I have a remote terminal server, everyone can log in to a virtual network from a remote location and continue to do business.”

To set up the virtual network, American Insurance deployed two Data Domain DD510 appliances. All data and systems needed for continuity of operations is backed up to one device at company headquarters and simultaneously replicated to the other device at a remote location. The remote appliance holds the data, applications and operating system that American Insurance needs to continue running the business after a disaster or service interruption of any nature.

American Insurance attached a server to the remote Data Domain appliance, providing the virtual network and bare metal recovery capability. If a disaster occurs, and the company loses use of its systems, any employee can simply log on to the virtual network from any PC or laptop in the world connected to the Internet and access all of American Insurance’s systems and data.

American Insurance’s success with the Data Domain appliances motivated San Filippo to start a new business called Bare Metal Solutions and expand his Data Domain solution to provide the same level of protection to other insurance agencies in the region. An agency can now deploy a Data Domain appliance in its office, and instantly replicate all data, applications and operating systems to a remote Data Domain appliance maintained by Bare Metal Solutions. In the event of a disaster, the agency simply connects to the network for immediate business continuity.

Data Domain appliances are software agnostic and easily attach to any in-house system or fabric, allowing an insurance agency to deploy the device and start backing up data and systems on the same day. Due to Data Domain’s compression and data deduplication capabilities, the data transfers after the initial backup do not require a costly new high-speed connection such as a T1 line, so agencies can use their current networks without saturating their network bandwidth.

Business Benefits

San Filippo estimates that agencies like his that are backing up data to tape are only about 30% protected from a disaster. By contrast, with an off-site Data Domain unit backing up data, applications and operating systems, he estimates an agency is 95% protected.

“By using Data Domain and a virtual network, I am out of business only until I can get my laptop up and running and connected to the Internet,” San Filippo states. “While I am setting up my new office, I can do business off the virtual network and my customer will never know the difference — which means no lost customers due to the disaster.”

Data Domain offers several additional advantages to American Insurance Services and the Bare Metal Solutions customer. First, as Data Domain backups initiate they are immediately replicated to the remote appliance, so the user’s data is not left exposed in between backup and replication. The immediate replication capabilities delivered by Data Domain’s inline data deduplication technology and Replicator Software enable virtually immediate recovery of business operations.

In addition, Data Domain checks data integrity as it is being stored, to ensure that the data is not corrupted. Traditional tape backup does not provide this advantage. When backing up data to tape, an insurance agency has no assurance that data is not corrupted, and in fact only finds out whether data has been corrupted at the point of recovery — when it is too late. With tapes being transported in a variety of ways, exposed to temperature changes, the elements, and damage, it is very easy to lose data, not only at the point of backup but anytime during backup, storage, retrieval and recovery processes.

“Insurance agencies need to do everything they can to protect their single largest asset — their business,” San Filippo concludes. “Having your computer system down is only a problem. It becomes a disaster at the point in time when your customer might move to another agency because you cannot service his or her needs. You need to determine when that point is, whether it be a minute, an hour, a day, a week or a month, and put a system in place that gets you up and running before that transition from ‘problem’ to ‘disaster’ can occur. American Insurance believes Data Domain is the answer. It enables an agency to economically compress and replicate data, applications and operating systems to a safe remote site that is easily accessible by a virtual network in case of any crisis. I don’t know of any other product that can do what Data Domain does. As insurance specialists, we believe that Data Domain is the best way to protect an insurance agency against disaster.”


“Data Domain enables our agency to economically compress and replicate data, applications and operating systems to a safe remote site that is easily accessible by a virtual network in case of any crisis. I don’t know of any other product that can do what Data Domain does. As insurance specialists, we believe that Data Domain is the best way to protect an insurance agency against disaster.”

Nick San Filippo
President
American Insurance Services Agency