Success stories
NAKIVO on NAS server 2x faster backup in engineering production
Business Challenge
Established in 1994, Pražská strojírna develops and manufactures rail structures and turnout systems for tramways and serves customers across Europe, North America, and Africa.
Pražská strojírna has two locations in Prague, Czech Republic. “Our IT infrastructure consists of 6 physical servers and 20 ESXi hosts across two different locations. Both locations are connected by LAN to provide disaster recovery, in case of an emergency situation at one location. VMware VMs store different kinds of data and applications, everything from DC, proxy, email, to Microsoft SQL and CRM,” says Ondra Havlíček, ICT Manager at Pražská strojírna.
The company invested in virtualization to ensure uninterrupted development and manufacturing of its products. “VM backups help us guarantee continuous enterprise operations, and also proper circulation of materials. Moreover, the know-how about our products and services is stored in the VMware VMs,” says Ondra. If something would have happened to such documentation, Pražská strojírna would be at risk of data loss and downtime.
Previously, the company protected its virtual environment with two different backup solutions, as well as used backup to tape. “Not only were the previous solutions quite expensive, but they also were lagging in terms of performance. VM backups were slow and required constant monitoring, and VM recovery tests took ages to complete. We needed a more reliable solution that would help us reach our goal of improving VM backup and recovery speed and maintaining copies of backups in two different locations. That is why we decided to contact our partner, exTerra Services, for a recommendation,” says Ondra.
Solution
exTerra Services introduced NAKIVO Backup & Replication to Pražská strojírna as a possible solution to problems with VM backups and as a DR implementation. “The installation was a part of the product introduction on the partner’s seminar and the simplicity of the solution was so unexpected that we agreed to a POC. After using the trial version, we decided to purchase NAKIVO Backup & Replication because the software was easy to use, fast, and had the features that we needed,” says Ondra.
Pražská strojírna decided to convert their Synology NAS into a VM backup appliance by installing NAKIVO Backup & Replication directly on the NAS. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication is fast, but when we installed it on our Synology NAS, the backup speed increased even further. Backups are so fast that we’re able to fully use the bandwidth available to the NAS,” says Ondra. “Moreover, NAKIVO Backup & Replication can use all the space available on the device to store VM backups.”
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Pražská strojírna achieved their goal of maintaining copies of backups in separate locations. “Since we have two locations, we wanted to protect our data and applications against unexpected disasters and VM failures, so by having not one, but multiple copies of backups, we wanted to ensure an extra level of safety. Backup copy enables us to quickly send copies of backups to both locations. Backup copies are consistent with the actual backup jobs and we can recover data from them, whenever we want,” says Ondra.
Results
NAKIVO Backup & Replication installed on Synology NAS provides Pražská strojírna with 2X faster VM backup speed. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, the company is now able to maintain copies of backups in two different locations. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication greatly simplified the way in which VM backups are done and dramatically increased backup speed, due to installation on Synology NAS. With the backup copy feature, we are now able to quickly move new backups to another location, without overloading the operating infrastructure and VMware VMs. Overall, with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we were able to save 70% of time on backup administration,” says Ondra.
NAKIVO Makes 2X Faster, 50% Smaller VMware Backups at CENIA
Business Challenge
CENIA, Czech Environmental Information Agency, is a state consultancy company under the Ministry of Environment of Czech Republic. CENIA collects and administers environmental data for the Czech Republic and provides independent environmental information in the economic and social context. Their main mission is to provide environment assessment and expected development of the state of the environment in the context of national trends and global megatrends. Decision and policy making support, continuous feedback, and advice are the key objectives of CENIA.
The virtual environment at CENIA stores anti-spam, lotus domino mail and application server, accounting, WSUS, application server, and a web server. “Any issues with the virtual infrastructure can have a direct impact on CENIA’s services (it is especially critical to have a recent backup of the accounting and shared data). That is why a backup solution is a vital component of maintaining our 24/7 availability,” says Petr Šmídek, ICT Administrator at CENIA.
Previously, CENIA used custom scripts as a method of data protection, but failed jobs, as well as long backup time were a common occurrence. “I noticed that it took a whole weekend for the previous solution to back up a VM with 1TB of data. In addition, the storage space was expanding rapidly. Basically, we decided to evaluate other available solutions on the market to ensure fast and consistent VM backups, and also offered reliable deduplication and compression,” says Petr.
Solution
exTerra Services introduced NAKIVO Backup & Replication to CENIA as a possible solution to problems with VM backup speed and increasing storage space. CENIA decided to switch to NAKIVO Backup & Replication due to a perfect combination of a rich feature set at a great price. “Initially, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy and intuitive the product is, appreciated the simplicity and clarity of the web interface, and also the fact that it does not overload the servers. We installed NAKIVO Backup & Replication on Ubuntu Linux by running a single command and started to perform VM backups to our NAS,” says Petr.
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, CENIA was able to significantly improve VM backup speed in comparison to the agency’s previous solution. “I attribute this change to VMware CBT technology that enabled us to finally have incremental backup jobs. With VMware CBT technology, VM backup time is significantly reduced,” says Petr. Another option that Petr appreciates is the ability to create recovery points in the backup repository for each VM. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication there is an ability to save up to 1,000 recovery points per VM backup.
Finally, CENIA solved the problem with increasing storage space with NAKIVO’s data deduplication feature. “Deduplication is strong and we were able to decrease storage space by 50%. Previously, our storage was swamped with huge backups, but now with deduplication, we have more efficient disk space utilization and can store more recovery points per VM. Lastly, we tried instant VM recovery and instant file recovery and both features work to our complete satisfaction and would be life savers in a disaster situation,” says Petr.
Results
NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides CENIA with 2X faster VM backup speed and VM backup storage savings. Thanks to automated email notifications, CENIA benefits from reliable VM backup. “Finally, VM backups finish correctly and do not require days of work. On average, I was able to save 5 hours per month of my own time that was previously spent on checking and controlling VM backups. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, I just get an email and I can see that VM backups finish successfully. With deduplication, we were able to decrease storage space by at least 50%. NAKIVO Backup & Replication solution delivers high performance and real-time alerts to ensure CENIA’s success,” says Petr.
Nutnost najít náhradu za toto řešení tak byla nasnadě. Při výběru nového řešení se bral v potaz také poměr cena/výkon. NAKIVO Backup & Replication nabízí skvělou kombinaci bohaté funkčnosti a atraktivní ceny. Pro zvolení NAKIVO hrálo i to, že přináší jednoduché, srozumitelné a intuitivní prostředí pro správu zálohování a replikaci VM. Zároveň příliš nezatěžuje servery.
Díky NAKIVO se celkově zrychlil proces zálohování a došlo k výrazné úspoře cenného místa, jež zabíraly předchozí zálohy. Současně IT administrátor ušetří čas, který by jinak strávil zálohováním, a může se tak věnovat jiným věcem.
