Getting Arriva London out of a storage jam
35
1-2-1
New backup implementation streamlines disaster recovery processes and
improves resource management. SNS-UK talks to Arriva’s Alan Ricot.
Arriva London is one of the system that is used for driver situation was getting to the
biggest bus operators in rostering and payroll point where it was becoming
AL
London, providing more than preparation. And there is also hard to manage. Staff were
AN RICO
19 percent of the capital’s bus have an email system which is frustrated by the lack of
services under contract to part of the Arriva PLC uniformity and we needed a
Transport for London (TfL). organization, file servers and change. We have some twenty
T
payroll/personnel system. servers and five or six
Contracts involve routes, different models of tape
vehicles and timetables Goals drives, each requiring a
specified by TfL and are Arriva London’s Head office in different tape format.”
closely monitored to ensure Wood Green stores and
services are of the highest manages all of the Alan adds: “We had to keep a
quality. scheduling, rostering, human vast tape library with formats
resources (HR) and payroll for ranging from DDS3 up to
Arriva London operates from London. As the company grew LTO4. We were unable to
nine garages in north London, so did their data, prompting restore from some old tapes
and from six garages in south Arriva London to re-examine due to them being broken or
London. In total, Arriva its data management and degredated. As we run buses
London operates buses that protection processes. 24/7 we only have a backup
travel more than 50 million window of one and a half
miles each year and allow Arriva London’s legacy backup hours on our OPAL system.”
over 330 million passenger system was built on tape
journeys. Arriva London is technology. This created Recognising that replication
part of the Arriva Plc group. problems, as tape backup was software is often expensive
slow, errors were frequent, and bandwidth-intensive, Alan
Arriva Plc is one of the largest and IT staff spent too much decided to investigate the
providers of passenger time managing the backup market further. Initially, Alan
transport in Europe. Its buses and recovery process. looked at trying to
and trains provide more than consolidate with one large
a billion passenger journeys a The situation was made worse tape drive, but, following a
year. by the fact that as new data storage seminar, hosted
servers were installed the by EVault’s platinum reseller
It has a major presence in tapes they required changed, BSG, he was instantly
over ten European countries which meant that IT staff had impressed by EVault’s
and its revenue has increased to deal with a number of solution.
by 140 per cent over four different tapes, of different
years to £752.3m. sizes, stored in different After reviewing its website he
locations. decided that the disk base
The organization has some backup solution could be an
300 IT users – the main Challenges ideal fit, as it eliminated the
system is the Operations Alan Ricot IT Manager, Arriva need for physical tape
Payroll and Allocation (OPAL) London comments: “The backup.
WWW.SNS-UK.CO.UK OCT 09
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