Matsuda Pharmaceuticals, known for its contribution to the nation's health since its founding in October 1947, is a diversified company specialized in both developing and selling pharmaceutical and quasi-drugs, cosmetics including skin treatment agents and bath additives, as well as selling veterinary drugs. It has one factory, one satellite office and eight sales offices located in the Kyushu and Shikoku regions. With the prediction of a major Nankai Trough Earthquake striking the area of western Japan at its highest in recent years, Matsuda Pharmaceuticals has been looking closely at its business continuity planning (BCP).
President and CEO, Mr. Yasuhiro Matsuda explains, "We had been looking into numerous countermeasures in preparation for a Nankai Trough Earthquake for some time, especially since we heard about the huge damage incurred by the numerous companies hit by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. We realized that we urgently needed to implement robust BCP measures for our company as well."

"To support future business growth, we needed to implement a remote backup mechanism based on a high availability (HA) cluster," says Mr. Teruyoshi Sugino from Toyo Business Solutions Co. Ltd. "After examining the available products, we recommended NEC's EXPRESSCLUSTER, well known as the No. 1 (*) product in the clustering software market in Japan."

A remote cluster system was constructed by using mirroring to synchronize Server 1 at HQ with Server 2 installed at the company's sales office in Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture. The network linking all the locations was updated to a mesh network layout enabling business continuity in the event of failure. A mechanism was also implemented to allow Toyo Business Solutions to remotely manage both servers at the Takamatsu and Kochi HQ locations whenever required.
"In a trial run prior to implementation, there was an incident where an engineer accidentally shut down Server 1," says Mr. Sugino. "I thought it was going to cause a terrible problem, but EXPRESSCLUSTER immediately failed over to Server 2 located in Takamatsu, so operational continuity was maintained."
"This inadvertent error demonstrated to us the real capabilities of EXPRESSCLUSTER," says Mr. Matsumoto. "Despite Server 1 being forced to stop, all our locations were able to continue their business activities without any problem. This gave us great confidence in the system, and an enormous sense of security."