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Mondi Packaging

Many companies have a disaster recovery strategy in place, but relatively few have been required to test it out in a real-life situation.

“As well as identifying a reliable solution that would preserve data availability in the event of a disaster, we wanted a partner capable of achieving smooth migration of a large volume of data from the old platform to the new”

Mondi Packaging is the market leading supplier of corrugated packaging products. Based in Coalville, Leicestershire, Mondi Packaging is the largest company in the Mondi Packaging Europe group, accounting for some 60 per cent of its production.

Business continuity is key to Mondi’s success, especially when difficult economic conditions dictate a heightened focus on efficiency. For Mondi, the loss of its ERP and manufacturing applications could have a severe impact on business. So when the company’s growth outstripped the capabilities of its existing disaster recovery solution, it needed to find the best possible replacement.

“As well as identifying a reliable solution that would preserve data availability in the event of a disaster, we wanted a partner capable of achieving smooth migration of a large volume of data from the old platform to the new,” commented systems administrator Steven Fenney.

Based on these requirements, Mondi chose a joint solution from HP and SCC, one of the UK’s most highly rated HP partners. Other important decision factors included the integrated nature of the proposed solution, its price and Mondi’s positive past experiences of working with SCC. SCC’s expertise and knowledge gained delivering DR solutions proved invaluable in specifying an effective replication.

SCC provided project management, technical consultancy, design, installation and support services. HP assisted with sizing and implementation. The solution is based on HP rp8400 and rp7410 Servers, one in each of two Data Centres run by Mondi’s outsourcing partner, BT. Each server is linked to an HP StorageWorks Disk Array XP 128, with HP StorageWorks Continous Access XP providing real-time data mirroring over an IP link.

Successful Failover

While the migration was in its final stages, the main fibre cable to the primary Data Centre at St Albans was damaged during road surfacing work, interrupting the service to all customers on the network. When it became clear that the problem would not be fixed for several hours at least, Mondi decided to failover its Baan application to the Bletchley Data Centre.

“Thanks to a smooth, seamless failover, full ERP functionality was available to users within half an hour,” said Steve Fenney. “The disaster situation was not resolved for another 29 hours, underlying the value of the HP/SCC solution.”

According to Steve Fenney, Mondi’s 250 Baan users were not even aware that anything had happened. More importantly, any potential loss of business – whether through a failure to enter orders or through customer defection – was avoided. Although Steve hopes that a similar situation does not rise again, he is confident that the disaster recovery solution, which is fully expandable, will meet Mondi’s needs for the foreseeable future.