Manufacturer Taps VAULT400 for Cloud Backup

May 7, 2013 Alex Woodie

ES Robbins, an Alabama plastics manufacturer, is now protecting its IBM i-based ERP system using VAULT400, the cloud-based backup and recovery service run by United Computer Group.

Based in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, ES Robbins is a specialized manufacturer of extruded polymer products that employs 150 people. The company’s five divisions make a variety of products for different industries, including floor mats, desk pads, bulk roll stripping, and fencing used in horse facilities.

The company recently bolstered its own internal disaster recovery (DR) scheme by subscribing to VAULT400, a backup and recovery service that utilizes EVault‘s native IBM i backup agent to move data over the Internet to UCG’s data centers. According to UCG, the VAULT400 solution will be used to store daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backups of ES Robbins’ data, including its IBM i-based ERP system.

In addition to being able to recover data from VAULT400 at any time, ES Robbins also elected to purchase 24-hour disaster recovery service from UCG. This gives the company the option of recovering its systems and data to UCG’s IBM i cloud environment.

ES Robbins IT Manager Jerry Baughn says backing up and restoring data “could not be easier” with the VAULT400 cloud. “The assistance we received from UCG could not have been better,” Baughn says in a press release. “The engineering staff went above and beyond to make sure license keys and our ERP system was running smoothly. The DR test further enlightened us on how to make improvements to our internal DR process and procedures.”

UCG sells several services around its VAULT400, including cloud-based DR with 12-hour and 24-hour recovery using the EVault backup and recovery technology, and a one-hour recovery utilizing high availability software from partner Maxava.

All three of these services utilize VAULT400’s IBM i servers located in UCG’s two data center. The company also recently unveiled a new offering called the IBM i Solution Edition for VAULT400. This offering combines the VAULT400 software (based on EVault) and a Power Systems server, and is designed to give customers the rapid provisioning and scalability of a cloud solution but without giving up control of the data. UCG plans to bolster this offering with a Chinese menu of technical IBM i services, thereby giving customers the remote management advantages of a cloud.