Case Study
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East Bay Regional Park District Plans
for Continuity Safely in the Cloud
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About East Bay Regional Park District
The East Bay Regional Park District spans Alameda and Contra Costa
counties east of San Francisco with more than 112,000 acres in
65 parks. There are more than 1,200 miles of trails for hiking, biking,
horseback riding and nature study. The Park District is responsible
for managing all lands, public programs and the park fire and police
departments as well as redeveloping lands for public parks.
In addition, the District is also responsible for preserving the rich
cultural history of the East Bay, including archaeological, historical and
scientifically valuable sites, areas and objects. Within the regional parks
are some of the finest remaining Native American sites in the Bay
Area, as well as historic features, including buildings, corral, springs and
foundations. These serve to educate citizens about the early culture of
the East Bay.
Situation
The IT organization of the District operates a number of organization-wide
applications including payroll, email, mapping and public safety
systems. While some of the applications are hosted off-site, the District
runs a number of systems in its own data center, and maintains data
storage and conducts nightly backups directly in District facilities. IT
management needed to assure that certain data would be protected
even if facilities were compromised due to equipment failure, fire or
natural disaster.
For public recreation, East Bay parks offer residents and visitors
swimming, boating and fishing areas, 235 campsites, golf courses,
education centers, and even banquet and wedding facilities.
Solution
To provide backup for some application data and to complement
its on-site storage, the IT team opted for AT&T Synaptic Storage as
a ServiceSM, which provides on-demand cloud storage at AT&T data
centers. Because the on-site storage is geographically diverse from
copies stored in the AT&T cloud, District data can be protected from
local problems. The District regularly pushes selected data to
AT&T Synaptic Storage over high-speed connections without the costly
investment in equipment or long-term commitment for storage space.
Open Spaces, Cultural Heritage and Recreation
Formed in 1934 with three parks across 2,000 acres, the East Bay
Regional Park District now has more than 1,750 square miles of public
land under management. Located on the east side of San Francisco
Bay, it is one of the largest regional park districts in the country.
The District’s resources are unusually diverse. They include 100,000
acres of mostly undeveloped and natural grassland, shrubland,
woodland, forest, lake, shoreline, riparian and wetland environments.
These provide an essential habitat for a diverse collection of wild plants
and animals, including a number of rare and endangered species.
The District also handles specialized work for state agencies, such as
the development of the East Shoreline along the Berkeley corridor,
where District teams are helping to turn former oil company and
shipyard areas into public lands under the guidance of the State
of California.
East Bay Regional Park District Facts
• Government Needs
Provide cost-effective off-site data storage for park district
applications
• Networking Solution
AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service, a cloud-based data
storage service
• Government Value
Simplified, low-cost geographically-separate storage of
critical information; no capital investment in new hardware
or facilities
• Industry
County agency
Case Study - East Bay Regional Park District___________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2
IT Needs for Public District
Similar to large government districts, the East Bay Regional Park
District relies on a complex IT and communications infrastructure.
East Bay’s IT Director Jim Tallerico manages an IT staff of seven,
who are responsible for standard enterprise-type applications, a
data center and a high-speed network connecting 45 parks to voice
communications and an internal microwave transmission system.
“In addition to systems such as payroll accounting and email, we
also provide records management for our Park Fire and Public
Safety Departments,” said Tallerico. “We make extensive use of
GIS, Geographic Information Systems, which we need for creating
everything from the park and trail maps for our visitors, to the
maps we use for managing our lands and facilities.” Tallerico’s team
also manages more than 650 individual computers used by staff
throughout the district.
To meet the operational needs of specific applications, the District
retains certain information locally. It also relies on externally hosted
services for other applications, mainly to insure that critical data is
available in the event of an earthquake or other local emergency.
Data and Disaster Recovery
Tallerico estimates that with current systems, his data storage needs
total about ten terabytes, with email being the single largest storage
element. “A typical email user’s account is about two gigabytes, which
includes everything from the usual office documents to photos. Quite
a lot of photos, actually.”
In the past, Tallerico and his team relied on conventional storage
capabilities. “For the data we stored here on site, we used tape backup
and then sent the tapes offsite for storage. About a year ago we
started using a backup and disaster recovery system provided by an
outside vendor where we replaced the tape with local disks.
“At the time, we also built out a second data center in one of our parks
near Brentwood. We began making nightly backups and pushing them
to the second location via microwave.”
But even having data stored at two separate sites left Tallerico with a
concern. “Our two facilities were only about five miles apart. A major
event such as an earthquake or natural disaster would likely take them
both out. That’s why we looked into AT&T cloud storage.”
Moving to the Cloud
“I had been approached by many vendors about cloud storage
solutions,” said Tallerico. “I understood the technology and the
rationale. But the services they proposed to me were much too
involved for my needs and required too much commitment.
AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service was much more attractive.”
As Tallerico pointed out, AT&T Synaptic Storage would allow him to
test the waters by sending specific data to the cloud and only paying
for the storage capacity he used. “I could see that it would be easy to
ramp up, once we decided on the type of data to store in the cloud
and what our back-up process would be. With AT&T I could essentially
use as much storage as needed, when I needed it. It was simpler and
more flexible.”
“Our two facilities were only about five miles apart.
A major event such as an earthquake or natural
disaster would likely take them both out. That’s why
we looked into AT&T cloud storage.”
– Jim Tallerico, IT Director, East Bay Regional Park District
In addition, Tallerico noted that his vendor already offered an interface
directly to the AT&T solution which simplified the initial connectivity
as well as everyday management. “We can do everything through
our portal. Our AT&T cloud storage appears as a virtual server, where
we just push our back-up data or pull back the data to recreate it.
Managing back-ups is very simple.”
The Value of Planning
Tallerico began by sending about 10 percent of his data storage to the
AT&T cloud solution, mainly to backup user email accounts. “We also
tested recovery of data to see exactly how it all worked,” said Tallerico.
“It worked well.
“The District is now in the process of establishing a formal document
retention policy, while we refine our own data recovery procedures,
using both our own on-premises systems and AT&T Synaptic Storage
as a Service,” added Tallerico. “Now that we have seen exactly how
well the AT&T solution performs and meets our requirements, we will
be moving more and more data to the cloud. For us it’s a very
cost-effective way to enhance our recovery systems.”
For more information contact your AT&T Representative or visit us at www.att.com/stateandlocal.
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05/31/12 AB-2440
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