Power Integrations Case Study

Client Name: Power Integrations
Industry: Technology
Data Domain Products: DD200 Restorer

About Power Integrations

Power Integrations, Inc., founded in 1988, is the leading supplier of high voltage analog integrated circuits used in power conversion. Power Integrations integrated circuits enable compact, lightweight electronic power supplies that are simpler to design and manufacture, more reliable, and more energy-efficient than those made with competing technologies. The integrated circuits at Power Integrations power a vast range of consumer and industrial electronics, including computers, DVD players, TV set-top boxes, cell phone chargers, home appliances, telecom networking equipment, and many others, all in both AC-to-DC and DC-to-DC applications.

The Power Integrations IT Challenge

In early 2004, San Jose-based Power Integrations began experiencing intermittent problems with their email server. The failing server concerned Steve Degner, IT manager at Power Integration. Degner’s organization is responsible for backing up and restoring more than 1 TB of data, including 90GB of data for mail storage. His department had standardized on a tape backup solution, but Degner was uncomfortable with recovering from tape in the event of a true disaster or mail server failure. The weekly full backups to tape took 50-plus hours and recovering the mail server from tape took more than a day. Waiting hours or days to recover from tape was not acceptable as 300-end users would sit while recoveries were performed. While looking for both a short-term and long-term solution to the unreliable email server, he realized he ultimately needed an enterprise Disaster Recovery and Business Continuation plan that relieved him of the performance problems and burden associated with tape backups. Degner began looking for alternatives to tape and he learned of the DD200's capacity optimized storage capabilities from an industry expert. Although skeptical, he decided to try the DD200.

Power Integrations Evaluation Criteria

When Degner began noticing increasing problems with the email server, he knew he might have to take down the mail machines for long periods of time to diagnose the problem because email problems were typically difficult to pinpoint. A 14-hour downtime for data recovery didn’t fit the company’s "rapid response to system failure" policy. The solution was to quickly build a mirror image of the mail server for troubleshooting.

To build the server, Degner implemented a full disaster recovery procedure of his production server and backed up the operating system, mail server software, and mail data to the DD200. Once these tasks were completed, he restored the mail server to new hardware. He was able to test patches and configuration changes on the newly created server and solved the problem offline. The positive results far surpassed his expectations and his skepticism was overcome by a real-life positive experience.

The Data Domain Capacity-Optimized Solution

The purchase the Data Domain DD200 recovery appliance proved to be the most logical and cost-effective solution for Power Integrations. The appliance met or exceeded all of Degner’s purchase criteria and he found the DD200 to be the perfect complement to the company's existing tape library strategy. The company’s most frequently needed data is stored locally on the DD200 and the information can be restored in a matter of minutes, not hours associated with storing tapes at remote, offsite locations.

Power Integrations Business Results

The Data Domain DD200 plays an integral role in Degner’s Business Continuation and Disaster Recovery plan. He can now recover three plus months of data easily and quickly with full confidence that he can successfully recover the backed up data. He has decreased his recovery window from 14 hours to 4 hours while reducing full backups from 3 days to 1 1/2 days. In addition, the ability to backup and recover multiple systems at the same time has given him more flexibility and allowed him to better serve his internal customers. He can now recover both his mail servers and enterprise applications at the same time, while with tape, he was limited to a slow, serial process.

Data Domain Benefits Summary

• Create a Disaster Recovery/Business Continuation Plan: The DD200 became an integral part of the company’s IT DR/BC plan.
• Decreased Recovery Windows: The DD200 has decreased the back-up windows from 14 hours to 4 hours
• Decreased Backup Windows: For full backups, the DD200 took the backup window from 3 days to 1 1/2 days
• Backup and Recover Multiple Systems: The DD200 gives them more flexibility and better serves internal customers; Backups and recoveries are transparent to the enduser community.

“I was looking for tape backup alternatives and skeptically tried the DD200. The positive results far surpassed my expectations and became the impetus for buying the DD200.”

Steve Degner
IT Manager
Power Integrations
San Jose, Calif.