Case Study: Rackspace RACKSPACE DELIVERS FANATICAL SUPPORT AND GROWTH IN MANAGED BACKUP WITH COMMVAULT

CHALLENGE

Rackspace needed infrastructure and functionality that could continue to manage explosive growth. Backup operations were taking days, rather than hours to complete and its legacy system was attempting to run all backup jobs at the same time, rather than in queue. A modern data protection solution that would accommodate integration with all leading storage platforms was needed.

SOLUTION

With its ability to work on all the leading storage platforms, Commvault software provided the flexibility that Rackspace needed to protect customer data no matter where it resides.

BENEFITS

Rackspace has benefited with cost savings in the millions of dollars by avoiding the need for more storage capex. Further, staff productivity has soared so that it can support rapid customer growth without the need to hire additional staff. Finally, Commvault’s ability to deliver faster restores has led to customer satisfaction levels that were previously unattainable, without having to face a “rip and replace” scenario.

Industry Managed Cloud Services

Corporate Headquarters San Antonio, TX

www.rackspace.com

2

As the No. 1 managed cloud services company, Rackspace’s technical expertise and Fanatical Support® allow companies to tap into the power of the cloud without the pain of hiring experts in dozens of complex technologies. Rackspace is also the leader in hybrid cloud, giving each customer the best fit for its unique needs — whether on single- or multi-tenant servers, or a combination of those platforms.

Rackspace migrated from tape-based backups to Commvault® software’s disk-based backups because of its ability to lower costs, reduce hardware infrastructure, and provide the robust features it needed now and into the future. According to Mike Bridgman, manager of backup and storage infrastructure, for Rackspace, “Rackspace realized sizable time and cost savings with the ability to shrink the data footprint sent over the network and backed up nightly. In addition, Commvault’s integrations and ability to work on all the leading storage platforms provided the flexibility that Rackspace needed to protect our customers’ data no matter where it resided.”

“Commvault software provides us with the scalability we need to manage our ongoing growth. Although our customer base has grown 47 percent in the last four years, we haven’t had to add staff or incur capital expense at nearly that pace. We are ending this year with 10% more protected clients, and improved success rate without having to increase our Managed Backup Fanatical Support team” DAWN RENEE CAMPBELL-GONZALEZ Senior Product Manager, Rackspace

SUPPORTING CUSTOMER GROWTH WHILE SCALING OPERATIONSFor Managed Backup with Commvault, Rackspace has been able to minimize the infrastructure and floor space needed to run the solution, while also allowing the administration team to take on other responsibilities without sacrificing their level of support for backup operations. “Commvault software provides us with the scalability we need to manage our ongoing growth,” stated Dawn renee Campbell-Gonzalez, senior product manager, for Rackspace. “Although our customer base has grown 47 percent in the last four years, we haven’t had to add staff or incur capital expense at nearly that pace. We are ending this year with 10% more protected clients, and improved success rate without having to increase our Managed Backup Fanatical Support team.”

Customers of Managed Backup never worry about what is being backed up or if it’s being backed up; in fact, most would agree they never even think about it. With tens of petabytes being backed up monthly for thousands of customers across its nine data centers, the solution provides a fully managed service that delivers the reliability, performance, security, and support that Rackspace customers seek, empowered by Commvault technology and dedicated resources.

Commvault ensures faster backups because source-side deduplication transfers only the data that has changed over the wire. “Commvault has delivered additional networking infrastructure savings,” stated Bridgeman. “Its software provides the ability to increase the amount of data that can traverse the network, allowing us to scale with shorter backup implications, and we have had to only add minimal amount of storage despite our enormous growth.”

3

MANAGING VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURES WITH STRESS-FREE RESTORES

With Managed Backup, Rackspace protects virtual machines (VMs) for the vast majority of its customers, supporting both VMware environments, and most recently expanding support for Microsoft Hyper-V. Here again, Commvault software’s extensive technology integrations provide the Rackspace team with the flexibility and scalability it needs to support new growth opportunities as customer virtual environments continue to expand. With Commvault’s single-platform approach, the team did not need to “rip and replace” any of its solution in order to expand Managed Backup to new hypervisors. As customers continue to add more of VMs into support by the Managed Backup service, the Rackspace team is confident that Commvault scale and functionality will expand right along with the environment.

Additionally, restores needed by Rackspace customers are performed in half the time it used to take with the company’s previous provider. According to Daniel Esparza, manager of backup administration at Rackspace, “Our customers can pick the data and the date they want to restore, we simply hit ‘restore,’ and the data gets pushed out to their client server. It’s easy and effortless, and most importantly, they get back the data they need.”

MAKING BETTER USE OF STAFF AND RESOURCES, NOW AND IN THE FUTURE

The Managed Backup service that Rackspace provides to its customers is all-inclusive – Rackspace deploys and configures each customer’s backup services, diagnoses and addresses any problems the customer may have, and performs any necessary restores. Customers rely on Rackspace to manage their entire infrastructure and Rackspace relies on Commvault to ensure their valuable data is protected.

Although the number of clients that Rackspace supports and protects has almost doubled over the past four years, Commvault’s automated reporting features and the reliability of the software backups has kept Rackspace from having to scale its Managed Backup Fanatical Support team to meet additional customer demand at the same pace. Using the software to automate key processes for deployment and failure remediation has not only improved staff productivity, but also enabled the high levels of service provided to customers.

Both Esparza and Bridgman commented that it has been easier to train and retain staff since deploying the Commvault solution. Esparza stated, “We have created Rackspace specific training for Commvault for our staff. From an administrative perspective, Commvault software has been far easier to train on than our previous solutions.”

Additionally, the responsive and collaborative support services that Commvault provides behind the scenes helps the Rackspace team operate efficiently on a daily basis. Access to dedicated support resources — both onsite and remote — ensure direct lines of communication and rapid resolution of sometimes complex and large scale problems to help Rackspace achieve its SLAs.

COMMVAULT AND RACKSPACE: DRIVING CLOUD ADOPTION TOGETHERRackspace recently upgraded to Simpana 10 software and found it to be the simplest and best upgrade to date. In fact, the upgrade process enabled consolidation of the Simpana CommCell® management infrastructure and freed up datacenter floor space – yielding further efficiencies. Through their collaborative efforts, the two companies have worked closely to enhance Rackspace’s services capabilities with the latest features of the Simpana platform. Rackspace is now leveraging several of these, including global reporting while investigating how workflow automation can further enhance Rackspace’s management efficiencies. In addition, customers looking to move their IT operations and applications into the cloud depend on Rackspace to help them migrate, manage and protect their cloud infrastructures.

In summing up the benefits of the Rackspace-Commvault relationship, Campbell-Gonzalez commented, “I think we have supported each other and pushed each other over the course of our seven-year relationship, and we’ve both grown as a result of that. It’s a positive partnership in which we both derive enormous benefits to support our businesses.”

“If there is one thing that Commvault does well, it’s being on the bleeding edge of picking up any storage solution and finding the best way to work with it. In that way, we don’t see Commvault as a limitation in any direction that our solution development may take us.” MIKE BRIDGMANManager of Backup and Storage Infrastructure, Rackspace

To learn more about Commvault and unified cloud data protection, visit commvault.com/cloud.

© 2015 Commvault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Commvault, Commvault and logo, the “CV” logo, Commvault Systems, Solving Forward, SIM, Singular Information Management, Simpana, Simpana OnePass, Commvault Galaxy, Unified Data Management, QiNetix, Quick Recovery, QR, CommNet, GridStor, Vault Tracker, InnerVault, QuickSnap, QSnap, Recovery Director, CommServe, CommCell, IntelliSnap, ROMS, Commvault Edge, and CommValue, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Commvault Systems, Inc. All other third party brands, products, service names, trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of and used to identify the products or services of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice.

PROTECT. ACCESS. COMPLY. SHARE.

COMMVAULT.COM | 888.746.3849 | GET-INFO@COMMVAULT.COM © 2015 COMMVAULT SYSTEMS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

RACKSPACE AT-A-GLANCE

• More than 60% of the Fortune 100 trust Rackspace to host their workloads

• Rackspace is the #1 hosting provider for the top 1,000 Internet retailers

• 200,000 customers worldwide love Rackspace’s Fanatical Support

• Rackspace was named a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader, Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, North America and Europe, 2014