Yamaha looks to CA to keep its MotoGP season on track

Yamaha Motor Racing will be using backup and replication technology from CA Technologies to protect its critical data at this month's Grand Prix de France in Le Mans.

The race team has implemented CA's ARCserve D2D and ARCserve Replication technology to back up its data, which includes metrics collected from the sensors on the motorbikes, such a temperature and other performance indicators.

The CA solution backs up data via an internet connection from 25 laptop computers to a main server at the company's headquarters in Gerno di Lesmo, Italy.

Yamaha said that the nature of a racing team means that it cannot have a "regular" IT infrastructure. Instead, the team's information – which includes up to 95GB for a single race – is stored on 25 laptops used by Yamaha Motor Racing collaborators.

"Due to frequent and intensive travelling, these devices are exposed to a significant risk, including being damaged, stolen or misplaced," explained Daniele Rigoldi, network and infrastructure group leader at Yamaha Motor Italia.

"In a highly competitive business like MotoGP, downtime is not an option. Yamaha Motor Racing needed a solution that would enable the rapid recovery of all critical data regardless of the location of the team."

He added that Yamaha evaluated a range of backup solutions, and decided to implement CA's products as they suited the company's way of working and the web 2.0 interface is fast and easy to use.

Yamaha said that it needs to manage large volumes of logistical and technical data as activities for each race involve managing 40 collaborators working in remote locations.

The team needed a solution that would back up the hard drive of each laptop to a remote disk quickly, keeping the installation of software on devices to a minimum.

"The data recovery problem had to be solved without disrupting either the current organisation of the racing team or the working methods of its members. Creating an enterprise-like IT infrastructure in a racing motordrome would be impossible; and forcing our specialised professionals to perform long local backup procedures during a MotoGP event would have been self-defeating," added Rigoldi.

"The positive experience of the CA Technologies solutions by Yamaha Motor Racing and the MotoGP team has resulted in the solution now being extended to the Yamaha World Superbike Team."

The solution was first trialled by Yamaha during a race in Valencia in October 2010.