Customer Story
Kingland Systems
Kingland Systems realized Assure MIMIX HA was the perfect HA/DR solution for their business
For both stockbrokers and the auditors who vigilantly monitor them, computer system downtime resulting in unavailable data or applications could trigger a major crisis. Systems must be continuously available. Making sure they are is Kingland Systems’ stock in trade. If Kingland is unable to meet its SLA obligations to keep systems up and running it can cost the company more than $160,000 per instance.
Kingland Systems’ primary data center is located in Clear Lake, Iowa. It also maintains a hot-standby backup site in Lake Mills, Iowa, about 31 miles away. That’s far enough so that a natural disaster that strikes one center would almost certainly not affect the other, particularly since the two centers are in different weather zones.
To help guarantee that at least one data center always has electricity, the two sites are on separate power grids provided by different power companies. Network connections are also protected by different communications paths so that at least one site can always connect to the outside world. Moreover, Kingland’s primary and backup sites are connected by a microwave link that would be available even if there were a problem with the company’s telecommunications supplier. As an added protection, the microwave link is backed up with a fiber-optic link supplied by a telecom firm.
Clearly, with such robust redundancy built in, the company’s hardware and networking infrastructure is well protected. The primary business challenge now was to protect the vital data and applications that Kingland Systems hosted for clients in its data center.
When Kingland Systems searched for a high availability solution, the company quickly realized Assure MIMIX HA was the right choice. Proven performance in other companies, along with the solution’s capabilities and price, easily tipped the scales in favor of Assure MIMIX HA.
