Minnesota Government Group Taps Unitrends for Backup Appliances

February 9, 2010 Alex Woodie

Minnesota Counties Information Systems (MCIS), a joint-powers organization that provides IT services to 13 county governments in Minnesota, has selected disk-to-disk (D2D) backup appliances from Unitrends to back up its System i and Windows servers, Unitrends announced yesterday.

Based in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, MCIS and its 12 staff members provides outsourced IT services and technical support for standard county government applications like property tax records, payroll, and treasury management. MCIS is relied upon by Koochiching, Itasca, St. Louis, Lake, Cook, Cass, Crow Wing, Aitkin, Carlton, Sherburne, Lac Qui Parle, Chippewa, and Dodge counties, as well as a handful of other counties that are associate members of the group.

In 2007, MCIS decided to move away from a tape-based backup system, which the organization deemed too unreliable, especially in light of the increased reliability of disk-based backup systems. The organization started looking at the various D2D-based systems on the market.

One of MCIS’ specific requirements was that the new D2D system had a way to create and maintain offsite copies of backups, for disaster recovery purposes. The organization also needed the D2D system to supports its range of Windows and i/OS servers, and to be easy enough to use that existing staff could manage it. Based on these requirements, MCIS’ i/OS software vendor, CPS Technology Solutions of Hamel, Minnesota, recommended Unitrends as the best solution.

Today, data from MCIS’ Windows and i/OS applications are backed up to the Unitrends DPU3000 appliance. The device enables MCIS to send one copy of its data offsite through removable disk drives, while another copy is maintained on the device for quick recovery. In the future, the organization may opt to send data offsite over the network via Unitrends’ integrated data replication capabilities.

Patricia Lenoch, a network administrator for MCIS, says she is happy with Unitrends. “I have been able to restore files many times without having to worry about having the correct media,” she states in a press release. “Unitrends also offers great support.”