The previous system was based on EMC's "Retrospect", but support issues meant that a new solution was needed. Backups were failing, and full backups could only be achieved over a weekend. Also the addition of a few PCs to the network meant a better cross-platform solution was needed.

Archiware PresSTORE was chosen both on price and usability. It was installed on an Apple Xserve, and was set up to backup 30 Mac and PC servers.

The results are impressive, with speedy backups, simple data retrieval and synthetic full backups that negate the need to interrupt server activities. A full backup of a shade under 900GB that once required a weekend, now can be completed in 4-5 hours.

Peter Shuttleworth gave a real life example.

"This afternoon we had three students that had lost files. In total there was 6 gigabytes of data that needed to be retrieved, but with the new system it was done in an hour. The old system would have taken overnight, and may not even have been worth doing for a single document."

Incremental backups are done each day and at the end of the week a full backup is performed. A "synthetic backup" can be taken at any time and it doesn't impact the network at all.

You can read more about PresSTORE and the "Blackpool 6th" setup here.