AWS Disaster Recovery: Contra Costa Community College District (CCCCD)

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

AWS DISASTER RECOVERY: CONTRA COSTA COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT

About the Company

The Contra Costa Community College District is comprised of three community colleges serving over 50,000 students. Located in Contra Costa County, in the beautiful and diverse San Francisco East Bay area, the district serves a million residents of the county through education, business partnerships and service in the community. The district first opened its doors in 1949 and is the second oldest and eighth largest multi-college community college district in California. The district consists of three colleges and two centers: Contra Costa College in San Pablo; Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill; Los Medanos College in Pittsburg; and the centers in Brentwood and San Ramon.

The Vision and Challenge

The CCCCD technology department wanted to enhance its IT disaster recovery (DR) plan, so that in the event of a disaster, it could provide uninterrupted service for the three college campuses and students it serves. Prior to working with InterVision and implementing a new strategy, CCCCD used a tape backup system that was stored at their Diablo Valley campus while the backup software sent backup replicas to an offsite location in Nevada. Even though this strategy was secure, it would have been difficult for CCCCD to quickly and efficiently recover in the event of a serious outage or disaster.

The Outcome

InterVision conducted a DR assessment for CCCCD and determined that the legacy offsite tape backup strategy for all CCCCD’s data could be dramatically improved by shifting the backup and restore strategy to the AWS cloud. In order to facilitate this strategy, InterVision recommended replacement of the on-premises backup software with Commvault that would allow CCCCD to back up and restore its data to the cloud and/or back to the CCCCD datacenter. The InterVision team worked in partnership with the CCCCD team to design the new AWS architecture using our prescriptive Cloud Migration Lifecycle Assurance (CMLA) program, implementing the Commvault software, testing the new system and seamlessly migrating this new process to the AWS cloud. The cloud architecture design and backup and restore strategy includes the following elements:

  • Development of new AWS cloud architecture for CCCCD
  • Assist with replacement and implementation of the Commvault software
  • Test and deployment of the new back-up and restore service

Prior to implementing the new solution, it would have taken CCCCD days and possibly weeks to back up and restore its datacenter and applications, costing them hundreds of hours to complete the effort. With the new AWS/Commvault backup and restore solution, CCCCD can now quickly and easily restore its entire datacenter in a relatively short amount of time and staff effort.

AWS Services Utilized:

  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon Glacier

Partner Products & Services Utilized:

  • Commvault – Backup and restore
  • CloudCheckr – consolidated billing and cost optimization

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