Bacardi, Limited is one of the world's most storied distillers, with 5,000 employees in offices on five continents and another 100 in the company headquarters in Hamilton, Bermuda. The headquarters is part of a worldwide leased private network that connects all Bacardi offices around the globe. The network facilitates the company's main business applications, including Lotus Notes/Domino, Oracle, JD Edwards, and SAP. These applications are used to control the business units within the company, including distilling, bottling, distribution, and finances.

Bacardi's Colorful History
Bacardi y Compañía was founded by Don Facundo Bacardi in Santiago, Cuba in 1862. Over the next century the company survived exile, legal attacks on their brand, and three major wars - the Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II. It was during the Spanish-American War of 1898 that members of the Bacardi family fought as Mambi independence rebels. To celebrate victory and Cuban independence, the company introduced the Original Cuba Libre and the Daiquirí cocktail.

Ironically it was yet another rebellion that forced them to leave Cuba. When Fidel Castro came to power in 1960, he nationalized Cuba's rum industry and illegally seized Bacardi assets. Along with countless others, the Bacardi family fled the island. During four decades of exile the Bacardi family has continued to operate and expand facilities on all continents.

The Bermuda Network
Today, Bacardi, Ltd., (www.bacardi.com) is the fifth largest spirits company in the world, with annual sales estimated at £349 million ($580 million). In addition to the Bacardi brand, the company purchased the Martini & Rossi, Dewars, and Bombay brands in the 1990s. The company is one of the few world-class distillers still privately held, and it has the distinction of being named by the Times of London as one of the 10 best companies to work for.

The local area network (LAN) for Bacardi's Hamilton, Bermuda headquarters utilizes a switched 10/100/1000 Ethernet network with approximately 150 workstations and 35 servers using predominately Windows 2000 Professional and Server. In addition, the LAN also features an AS400, HP/Compaq DEC Alpha VMS Cluster and Linux.

Backup Protection for Heterogeneous Networks
Maintaining and upgrading the network is the responsibility of Philip Chadwick, the network systems manager. One of his many tasks is coordinating backup of all servers, a critical aspect of managing any LAN.

"We originally used backup software from some of the larger companies and found that they were complex, expensive solutions," Chadwick explains. "I searched for a better solution and discovered Arkeia's enterprise network backup software, which is Linux/Unix-based.

"I originally installed Arkeia v4 on a server running Red Hat Linux and was pleasantly surprised to discover how easy it was to deploy. I've been impressed with its stability and ease of use. In fact, I've never really had any issues with Arkeia software."

Recently, Chadwick purchased Arkeia v5 backup software for a second Linux backup server. This new generation's distributed architecture is based on a backup server, client modules, and an administration interface. The software itself maintains the history of backups and easily handles backup devices such as tape drives and libraries.

"Arkeia's software provides reliable, secure, scalable support for multiple operating systems, which makes it ideal for backing up heterogeneous networks. In addition, it provides hot backup plug-ins for Oracle, MS-Exchange, Lotus, IBM DB2, and MySQL," notes Chadwick.

The new Arkeia v5.2 includes fully redesigned reporting functions for more highly customizable machine-based reports. Reports also inform system administrators when operations are successfully completed.

Among other features is support for DLTSage technology that incorporates preventive and predictive diagnosis for SDLT tape devices. An optimized catalog algorithm produces dramatic backup speeds for large file servers (five times faster for 10,000 files within a single directory and 50 times faster for 150,000 files inside the same directory). For maximized security, Arkeia's expanded GUI facilitates tape duplication for off-site storage. This, combined with Arkeia's disaster recovery plug-in for backup servers, lets IT administrators rebuild the backup environment from scratch if theft or total destruction occurs.

The company also offers a variety of technical support programs. Bacardi, for example, subscribes to Arkeia's e-mail support. "I don't need support very often," Chadwick explains, "so Arkeia's e-mail support is ideal for us. The few times I've required support they've been very responsive, usually providing solutions the same day.

"I originally purchased Arkeia backup software because other solutions were too expensive for our network," Chadwick concludes. "Now that the software is installed, it's delivered all the capabilities I need. And the company is constantly coming out with new add-ins such as Lotus Notes. It's just an excellent product."