WHITE PAPER
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Mississippi Department of Transportation
The Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) plans, designs, and manages the state’s transportation
infrastructure, including more than 13,000 lane miles of state highways as well as transportation over water,
air and rail. They use 300 servers to drive some of the nation’s most advanced applications, ensuring swift and
safe traffic flow. In 2009, the department launched a virtualization initiative to lower its hardware costs and
improve overall hardware reliability.
MDOT purchased Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server Virtual Edition to take advantage of a
unique pair of features. First, it eliminates a requirement to place backup agents on each of many VMs before
they can be backed up. A single host agent manages the backup tasks of all VMs automatically. “Upgrading
agents has always been time consuming,” says the department’s Information Systems Administrator.
“We currently have about 14 VMs on a single host at any given time, and all of them are run by one agent. That
represents only one upgrade versus 14, and when we save time, we save money. With Acronis agent-less backup,
it’s one less thing you rely on the server operating system to do. In fact it’s totally transparent to the operating
system.” While the department has not suffered from any disasters since installing Acronis, it has regularly
used Acronis images to restore machines and pull files. Second, it leverages the product’s pricing support for
an unlimited number of VMs on a physical host for a single physical host license. With about 14 servers on each
host, this translates into an approximate 90% savings over supporting the same number of VMs with Acronis’
regular advanced server solution.
Acronis disk imaging technology has also cut physical-to-virtual server transitions from several hours to under
an hour, saving approximately 80% of the time it would have taken to manually carry out the process. By mid
2009, newly available Acronis management tools like centralized management and automated reporting further
reduced the time it took to carry out each physical-to-virtual migration to about 15 minutes. By late summer
2010, the virtual server count had climbed to 125. The department was on track to enter the new year with 200
virtualized servers of the department-wide total of 300 machines.
Where IT organizations can go for help
Virtualisatie biedt zoveel voordelen, en het kiezen van de correcte software voor back-up en herstel voor uw
consolidatie- en herstelbehoeften, bepaalt de mate van bescherming. Daarom raden wij Acronis Backup &
Recovery 10 Advanced Server Virtual Edition aan. Dit product voldoet aan de meest kritieke eisen m.b.t. een
succesvolle consolidatie en beschermt al uw virtuele apparaten.
Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server Virtual Edition
Server consolidation and disaster recovery in one package
Acronis serves both virtualization and data protection initiatives in a single solution. It is a fully integrated
package that simplifies administration and lowers the cost of building and managing Windows and Linux
servers.
