Download HarperCollins' Cloud Transition: A Success Story with Commvault and Microsoft Azure and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Strategic Management in PDF only on Docsity!
Case Study: HarperCollins
COMMVAULT AND AZURE CO-AUTHOR HARPERCOLLINS’ CLOUD STORY
CHALLENGE
- Legacy SAN not meeting business requirements
- Adhering to parent company’s ‘Cloud First’ policy
- Migrating an enterprise infrastructure into the cloud SOLUTION Commvault data protection and disaster recovery inside Microsoft Azure cloud and on-premises BENEFITS
- Modernisation and consolidation of IT by leveraging Microsoft Azure
- Move to a more manageable OPEX model
- Ability to leverage existing Commvault investment for cloud migration, and ongoing protection on-premises and inside Azure
- Multiple restore options and secure public cloud disaster recovery
- Deduplication delivering high savings in both space and IT department’s time Industry Media London Headquarters 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk
“We were moving an enterprise infrastructure
into the cloud, so we needed enterprise
tools….from our experience of Commvault,
we knew it was the perfect fit.”
RUSSELL BRADFORD then infrastructure manager for HarperCollins
2
With a heritage stretching back nearly 200 years, HarperCollins Publishers
LLC is one of the world’s largest publishing companies and part of the
“Big Five” English-language publishing companies. Founded in Glasgow
in 1819, William Collins & Sons merged with New York’s Harper & Row in
1990 to create the HarperCollins worldwide brand, with News Corp as its
parent company. Today, HarperCollins UK employs some 900 people in
London, Glasgow and Honley and has a catalogue ranging from cutting-edge
contemporary fiction to award-winning apps and everything in between.
HarperCollins UK prides itself on leading the industry in innovation. It was the first trade publisher to digitise its content and create a global digital warehouse. Parent company NewsCorp is equally ahead of the curve when it comes to technology and has a “cloud first” strategy that aspires to migrating 75% of its global IT infrastructure into the cloud.
ORIGINAL COMMVAULT DEPLOYMENT
HarperCollins first deployed Commvault in 2011 to make the back up of 150 servers at its Hammersmith offices and 250 in Glasgow more efficient. The publishing house deployed on-premises Commvault solutions for backup, deduplication, and disk to disk (as well as disk to tape) replication for DR purposes. The legacy HP SAN system had not been meeting the company’s data requirements but Commvault reduced traffic and increased the speeds of backup and recovery through deduplication. Eighteen months ago, NewsCorp decided to bring its subsidiary companies, Dow Jones, News UK and HarperCollins, into the same building in London. Unlike the Hammersmith premises, the London office had no data centre or back office, so there was no space for servers, (assuming the equipment could survive being moved, which was unlikely). With the company having to lease data centres, whether in the cloud or physically located elsewhere, it seemed the perfect time to implement NewsCorp’s strategy of moving 75% of IT infrastructure to the cloud.
AZURE THE OBVIOUS CHOICE
HarperCollins had a very good relationship with Microsoft, so Microsoft’s Azure Platform was the obvious choice when it came to moving the data centre to the cloud and realising its cloud strategy. Microsoft brought along its partner Dotnet solutions to help HarperCollins make the transition. In addition to following the NewsCorp Cloud First Strategy, moving to Azure cloud services enabled HarperCollins to consolidate its IT and switch to a more manageable OPEX commitment. A CAPEX model would have meant a sizeable expenditure in one go, which wouldn’t allow the business to budget as easily as Azure’s pay-as-you-go plan. Reducing the physical data centres with a cloud strategy would also save the company money on suppliers, power, and air conditioning, in addition to the physical space that racks and servers require. “When we first moved to Azure, it was bleeding edge. There was no back up. But we had Commvault as our on-premises backup and knew that not only could it meet our requirements, but also it would integrate perfectly with Azure. So that decision was a ‘no brainer’,” said Russell Bradford, then infrastructure manager for HarperCollins, now cloud platform manager for News UK. “We were moving an enterprise infrastructure into the cloud, so we needed enterprise tools….from our experience of Commvault, we knew it was the perfect fit.”
ADDITIONAL PEACE OF MIND
HarperCollins use Microsoft ExpressRoute for the critical network dependency between Telecity and Azure. This production data is protected with a dual site data protection strategy. Commvault software makes a copy directly to the primary Azure Cloud data centre in North Europe (Ireland) and an auxiliary copy to the secondary Azure Cloud data centre in West Europe (Amsterdam). This gives HarperCollins multiple restore options in the event of any infrastructure issues or primary data loss. The design also allows for advanced disaster recovery capability in the Cloud, giving HarperCollins additional control over the protection of its data. The Azure data centre in West Europe acts as a DR site for the compute workload with server images ready to bring on-line and restore, should they need to do so, using Microsoft’s Geo-redundant storage (GRS). “We set up the DR environment this way so that if our environment offshore went offline, we could bring it back up in Amsterdam. Because Commvault software is always copying the data across, we have complete control and complete peace of mind.” Commvault VM and cloud management gives you the agility to meet your organization’s need for responsive, cloud-based infrastructure. For more information, visit commvault.com/cloud.
HARPERCOLLINS
PUBLISHERS
AT-A-GLANCE
PLATFORM/FILE SYSTEM
- Microsoft Azure
- VMware APPLICATIONS
- SQL
- Oracle
- Windows
- Linux HARDWARE
- Microsoft Azure VMs and Azure Blob Storage
- HP blades and HP storage for on-premises NETWORKS
- Microsoft ExpressRoute
- Cisco © 2017 Commvault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Commvault, Commvault and logo, the “C hexagon” logo, Commvault Systems, Commvault OnePass, CommServe, CommCell, IntelliSnap, Commvault Edge, and Edge Drive, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Commvault Systems, Inc. All other third party brands, products, service names, trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of and used to identify the products or services of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice. COMMVAULT.COM | 888.746.3849 | GET-INFO@COMMVAULT.COM © 2017 COMMVAULT SYSTEMS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
