instant VM recovery Archives

Business Challenge

Silk Road Bank is a bank in Tbilisi, Georgia, that was founded in the early 1990s. The bank provides customized products and services to corporate and private customers, including non-residents. The bank provides financial services such as payment cards, loans, savings accounts, credit lines, online banking, among others.

The bank’s IT infrastructure consists of 2 sites and 4 physical servers with 30 virtual machines. The virtual machines run frontend services for the bank’s customers and backend services with databases. Backup, recovery, and replication are critically important instruments for protecting the bank’s financial data.

Previously, the bank relied on scheduled database backups and manual backups for certain virtual machines. The previous approach meant that backups took too long to complete, and the probability of a failed backup was too high. With failed jobs, the IT team spent most of their time verifying the validity of backups. Moreover, recovery jobs were not always successful either. The main criteria for implementing a new solution was to have working backups with flexible automation options, reliability, and better performance in terms of speed.

Solution

“We were looking for a backup solution that would have high backup and recovery performance without any failed jobs, as well as provide us with a process for verifying the quality of backups and recoveries,” says David Gamidadze, System and Network Administrator at Silk Road Bank. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication addressed all our challenges in data protection. NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a reliable solution that helped us achieve a 100% success rate with working backup jobs.”

Silk Road Bank installed the solution on a QNAP NAS, allowing the bank to take advantage of already available hardware. This deployment option creates an integrated backup appliance, giving the bank increased backup speed, efficient data compression, and instant data recovery. “The entire installation process was smooth and painless. The web interface is also user-friendly,” says David.

“We have different scenarios for different VMs. For critical VMs, we do backups at the end of every day. For VMs of medium importance, we do backups two to three times a week. For low-importance VMs, we do backups once every two weeks,” says David, “Overall, for a 1-TB VM with databases, the backup job is completed within 20 minutes.”

Silk Road Bank also takes advantage of other functionalities such as backup copy and instant VM recovery in NAKIVO Backup & Replication. “Backup copy ensures that we have a second copy of our backups in another location,” says David. “For us, instant VM recovery saves a lot of time because we operate 24/7. Recovering a VM within minutes is incredible.”

Results

“NAKIVO Backup & Replication saved our IT team nearly 90% of the time we spent on data protection versus our previous solution. The IT team achieved stability in their daily activities, as they can now focus on other tasks rather than on monitoring the backup solution full time,” says David. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication is user-friendly and saves us time every day. NAKIVO Backup & Replication covered all of the issues that we experienced before and exceeded our expectations. NAKIVO’s technical support is customer-oriented and great at addressing customer’s needs.”

About Silk Road Bank

Over the years, the Silk Road Bank has proved to be a stable financial institution successfully represented in several countries worldwide. Silk Road Bank offers services to both individual and corporate customers. For the past several years, the bank has supported the establishment of many Georgian brands, assisted various local businesses in broadening their activities, attracted several foreign investments, and successfully implemented international projects. For more information, visit www.silkbank.ge.

Business Challenge

Texas Peoples National Bancshares provides a full range of commercial banking services to customers in the state of Texas. The company’s products and services include investments, financing, cards, insurance, remote banking, personal banking, and direct deposit.

Texas Peoples National Bancshares operates out of three sites with 1 physical server and 22 virtual machines. Virtual machines store the company’s critical data like documents, spreadsheets, and databases. The company runs financial applications to support teller functions, account opening, and instant issuing of debit cards. Virtual machines also run an email server, a telephone system, and collaboration applications. Maintaining uninterrupted access to critical data and applications that support the organization and their customers is of the utmost importance. Protecting data with the help of a VM backup solution ensures data availability and business continuity.

Previously, the company relied on a different VM backup solution for data availability. Recovery with the previous solution was slow, there were daily failed jobs or backup hangs. The main criteria for choosing a new solution were speed, efficiency, reliability, and cost.

Solution

NAKIVO Backup & Replication stood out from the competition due to the solution’s extensive functionality set and multiple deployment options. The solution can protect virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS environments with incremental and application-aware backups. The solution provides complete visibility via a unified dashboard for all data protection activities and workloads. Moreover, deployment is easy and flexible with a range of options: installation on Windows/Linux, as a pre-configured virtual appliance, or on NAS.

“Installing and configuring NAKIVO Backup & Replication was a breeze. The web interface is simple, intuitive, and responsive. Since the solution offered integration with Synology NAS, we took advantage of this functionality, and we really enjoy the portability and unification of both hardware and software,” says Pat Watson, Vice President/CTO at Texas Peoples National Bancshares.

“Backing up our entire environment takes nearly four hours, while incremental backups take about 50 minutes,” says Pat. “We enjoy fully automated backups that reduce administrative complexity and time spent on data protection. We do not experience issues anymore with stuck or hung backups.”

“In the past, recovery was a long and exhausting process for us. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we can recover entire VMs, files, and application objects directly from backups. Thus, we have minimized time for recovery dramatically,” says Pat.

“We also take advantage of backup copy functionality and VM replication. We keep an extra copy of our backups for archival purposes. And with VM replication, we always have a VM replica available for disaster recovery purposes,” says Pat.

Results

“The simplicity, elegance, and complete functionality set is unmatched at the price point that NAKIVO provides its customers,” says Pat. “Our backups are portable, fast, and more reliable than ever before. NAKIVO Backup & Replication has saved us thousands of dollars in yearly renewal costs and eliminated countless hours we used to spend on maintaining our old solution,” says Pat. “With the previous solution, we struggled to complete offsite replication due to limited bandwidth between our sites. We no longer have this problem with NAKIVO Backup & Replication.”

About About Texas Peoples National Bancshares Inc.

In 1988, a group of local businessmen formed Texas Peoples National Bancshares, Inc. (TPNB). In December of 1988, TPNB acquired the assets and assumed the liabilities of the failed First National Bank – Bogata from the FDIC. The assets and liabilities were acquired into a new wholly owned subsidiary of TPNB known as Peoples National Bank. PNB began to experience rapid growth as a result of a local board of directors with a commitment to serving the local community. PNB was the first local bank to offer the convenience of three locations to its customers. For more information, visit www.pbparis.com.

Business Challenge

Nordcurrent is an international publisher and developer of free-to-play and casual games for smartphones, tablets, and PC/Mac. Established in 2002, Nordcurrent is best known for the hit game Cooking Fever, which has been downloaded by almost 200 million users. Other recent Nordcurrent games include Sniper Arena and Murder in the Alps.

Nordcurrent’s IT infrastructure comprises 8 physical servers and 82 internal virtual machines. The virtual machines store communication servers, the source code, and assets management servers. All working content is stored on the servers, thus backup and recovery services are extremely important for the company. Most of the servers must have backups because rebuilding all the content from workstations is complicated and nearly impossible. Any kind of data loss or downtime can impact development time, thus increasing the time of game release.

After virtualizing their environment on VMware, Nordcurrent decided to look for an easy-to-use VM backup solution. The company required wider functionality, including data deduplication, faster backup, and easier recovery.

With Nordcurrent’s previous solution, daily backups were not possible, and the company ran their backups on weekends only. Since the previous solution relied on custom scripts, the IT team had to put more hours into managing the solution. Constant monitoring and rechecking backup health were performed by the IT team. In addition, for recovery, all systems had to be rebuilt from scratch, and only then recovery was possible. Lastly, Nordcurrent did not have data deduplication, incremental backups, or easy scheduling.

Solution

NAKIVO Backup & Replication delivers complete data protection for virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS environments. The solution allows organizations to manage hundreds of hosts across multiple sites. The solution can be easily deployed on NAS, Windows/Linux, and as a hardened VA/AMI. In less than 5 minutes, you can run the first backup and ensure complete data protection. “We installed NAKIVO Backup & Replication on our Synology NAS, and in just a few clicks, we were ready to run our first backup job,” says Andrej, CTO at Nordcurrent. “The solution works out-of-the-box and requires less attention from the IT team, allowing us to focus on other IT tasks.”

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can run incremental and image-based VMware backups for better efficiency. “Currently, we run daily and weekly backups. VM backup functionality works smoothly and with ease,” says Andrej. “With global data deduplication, we save storage space. While with VMware backup, we can do full and incremental VM backups, use less network traffic, and work in the background, with minimum load on running servers. Overall, we no longer need big data storage to save all our backups, which is great.”

NAKIVO Backup & Replication also allows Nordcurrent to back up workloads to Amazon S3, a cloud storage service. The solution sends backups to Amazon S3 and provides access to those backups from anywhere in the world. “With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we can store large backups in the cloud, which was not possible previously,” says Andrej.

Nordcurrent also takes advantage of instant VM recovery and instant granular recovery. “Once we experienced SAN failure and had to recover a big part of one virtual machine. We were able to recover that VM in a few hours, instead of the several weeks it took us with our previous solution. Instant granular recovery is commonly used, as users often delete files, and we can recover those files in just a few minutes,” says Andrej.

Results

“NAKIVO Backup & Replication helped us achieve ease-of-use and provided us with meaningful features, including incremental backup, global data deduplication, instant VM recovery, and instant granular recovery,” says Andrej. “The solution just works and does not require constant attention from the IT team. Our system administrators can focus on other tasks and improve our infrastructure. The product sends us reports, saves space on disk thanks to data deduplication, and allows us to spend time for other tasks. Recovery of critical VMs within a few hours, after a major failure, is also a huge bonus and time saver.”

About Nordcurrent Group

Established in 2012 in Vlinius, Lithuania, Nordcurrent is a developer and publisher of casual games for smartphones, tablets, and PC/Mac. Nordcurrent has three development studios in Vilnius, as well as in Odesa and Dnipro (Ukraine). During the last 19 years, Nordcurrent has developed more than 50 games for various platforms. The studio’s biggest hit so far is Cooking Fever – a time-management game where players can cook meals and desserts from all over the world. The game has almost 400 million downloads and 15 million monthly active users. For more information, visit www.nordcurrent.com.

Business Challenge

BTC Networks is a trusted partner for end-to-end, integrated engineering, quality services, and digital transformation management. More than four decades of experience have transformed BTC into a mature ICT provider and enabled the company to understand business, technology, and operational elements in great detail. BTC has grown not only in size, geography, and revenue but has also evolved a corporate culture dedicated to client satisfaction, lasting relationships, and social responsibility.

BTC’s IT infrastructure consists of 14 physical servers and 100 virtual machines across seven locations in four countries. VMs hold critical customer data, in addition to user, management, and services applications. The company’s successful daily operations rely heavily on these applications, containing essential data that must be preserved and kept available 24/7. Customer service, especially customer satisfaction, could heavily suffer if critical data gets lost. A reliable VM backup solution is key to ensuring BTC’s operations and client care.

BTC Networks examined trial versions of backup solutions from different vendors but were never completely satisfied. Most of the trials only allowed full backups and not incremental backups. Other solutions had fancy interfaces, but finding the necessary settings proved complicated. Most of them also did not have VM replication and the ability to recover individual files and objects. The goal was to find a solution that was simple to implement and maintain while offering all the features necessary for an enterprise.

Solution

In the end, NAKIVO Backup & Replication was chosen as BTC’s data protection solution for backup, replication, and recovery. BTC selected the product due to the extensive feature set, usability, and price point it has to offer. “Basically, NAKIVO Backup & Replication offered many more features than other vendors. Ease of use and implementation was the main reason why we decided to select this product. NAKIVO Backup & Replication has a user-friendly web interface, which is great for simplicity. Competitive and reasonable pricing was also a big bonus for us,” says Rogelio Alvarez, Network Analyst at BTC Networks.

“Installing and managing the software was straightforward and without any additional unnecessary settings. The simplicity of the web interface makes the software responsive and reliable, especially since recovery from a disaster should be immediate. We installed NAKIVO Backup & Replication using VMware OVA. We are also using NFS for external backup storage. Moreover, we configured replication jobs to multiple sites for disaster recovery,” says Rogelio.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides incremental, image-based, and application-aware VMware backups. “We perform VM backup every 1 hour, 8 hours, and 24 hours. Policy-based search criteria have greatly helped us, as we can now manage which VM goes to which backup job by using VMware tags, states, folders, and more. This simplifies and speeds up how we manage the backup jobs classifications of over 100 VMs,” says Rogelio.

BTC Networks also utilizes VM replication, instant VM recovery, and instant file recovery. “VM replication helped us recover quickly from a disaster situation we had a while back. VM replicas are stored on our disaster recovery sites, we just have to power them on when something occurs on our main site. Replication duration is also fast because of the incremental replication approach,” says Rogelio.

“Instant VM recovery proved effective when our critical VMs were corrupted for different reasons. We were able to recover these VMs within an acceptable time frame. There were also cases where users mistakenly deleted their files or emails. With instant granular recovery, we managed to recover all critical files and emails quickly,” says Rogelio.

Results

“NAKIVO Backup & Replication has an easy-to-use interface and is rather simple to install and manage; we just deployed the software once and never had to configure anything again. Moreover, NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a reliable VM backup solution with reasonable pricing. The product solved all the issues we encountered with different vendors and repeatedly proved itself. VM replication sped up our response when we encountered a disaster at our main site, and we often relied on instant VM recovery and instant granular recovery. NAKIVO’s technical support has always been responsive via the chat and all our questions were always investigated to the fullest capacity,” says Rogelio.

About BTC Networks

BTC Networks is an ICT provider established in 1975 in Saudi Arabia. BTC introduced the first and largest digital PABX, the first video conferencing and the largest data network in the Kingdom, as well as other breakthrough products and solutions. As a result, the company takes pride in playing a direct role in connecting millions of people together and servicing all market segments by providing state-of-the-art products and customized solutions. Today, BTC Networks is acknowledged as one of the largest integrated ICT solution providers in the Middle East, with branches in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan. For more information, please visit www.btcnetworks.net.

Business Challenge

San Luis Clinic aims to preserve the lives of women and children by providing high-quality, humanized, and reliable health services. San Luis Clinic has ISO 9000 certification, which allows the clinic to be recognized as one of the best health service providers in the area of Santander, Columbia. Nearly 117,00 children have been born at the San Luis Clinic.

The organization has three hosts with a total of 50 virtual machines. The entire IT environment is replicated to a secondary site with a two-host cluster. The main data consists of patient records, clinic history, and diagnostic images. There are also internal administrative processes, including files, network services, security services, and invoicing services. All of the clinic’s applications amount to nearly 10TB of data. The clinic operates 24/7, so downtime risk must be minimized. According to government regulations, patient data must be stored and archived for 20 years, thus losing this data would be absolutely disastrous for the clinic.

In the past, San Luis Clinic protected its virtual environment with another solution that was flash-based and when VMware stopped supporting that product, the clinic had to quickly look for an alternative. The clinic’s trusted advisor from ITCOL SAS recommended NAKIVO Backup & Replication. The IT team saw a demo and the solution matched all their criteria, so switching to NAKIVO Backup & Replication was an easy decision.

Solution

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is an easy-to-use, comprehensive data protection solution for virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS environments. The solution includes many industry-leading features, including granular recovery, instant VM recovery, backup to cloud, backup to tape, installation on NAS, and much more. The solution offers a variety of installation options, including deployment as a pre-configured virtual appliance. “Thanks to the user-friendly web interface, the day-to-day management of NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a breeze. We are absolutely satisfied with the solution’s usability and the variety of installation options provided. For now, we installed NAKIVO Backup & Replication as a virtual machine, but NAS integration could also be interesting in the future,” says German Pinzón, IT Director at San Luis Clinic.

“NAKIVO Backup & Replication takes about two hours to back up the entire changes of one full working day in the clinic. We perform backup four times a day for the most critical VMs without any issues, while the other VMs are backed up one time a day every day. What we like most about the VM backup feature is that the functionality simply works, which is awesome. We have experienced no failed backup jobs so far,” says German.

Instant verification provides an automated way to test VM backups and replicas and get proof that those VMs are indeed recoverable. The automated verification of VM backups and replicas is performed in a matter of minutes and helps to protect users from bad backups or replicas that are not recoverable. “Thanks to the instant verification, we reduced the risk of having bad backups and not knowing about them. The functionality saves us time on backup administration as well, in comparison to our previous solution,” says German.

“We use granular recovery and instant VM recovery on a constant basis, as we did not have this functionality with our previous solution. Fast file recovery and full VM recovery is a huge time saver for the IT team, when someone deletes a file or an entire VM gets corrupted. Both features save us time and therefore money every day,” says German.

Results

“With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we stay calm, knowing that our data is always protected. The solution offered us great value in terms of usability, functionality, and pricing. Thanks to instant verification, we reduced the risk of having corrupted backups and improved backup reliability. In terms of backup administration, we saved time as well, because the product is automated and we do not experience any failures. Compared to what we were using previously, we have definitely saved time on backup management and gained peace of mind,” says German.

About San Luis Clinic

San Luis Clinic is a healthcare center focused on birth, maternity, and pediatric services for the northeastern region of Colombia. The clinic was founded in 1981 by three physicians and started operations on three floors with 72 hospital beds. Today, the clinic has grown to a complex of three buildings and more than 1,800 hospital beds. The organization is the most important maternity and pediatric center in the northeastern region of Colombia. For more information, visit www.clinicasanluis.com.co.

Business Challenge

IR Soluciones is a young IT company with a team of 20 professionals with over 18 years of experience in the IT sector. With offices in La Rioja, Spain, the company manages IT projects for SMEs from Spain with deployments globally. IR Soluciones provides communications, VoIP, and data center management services. IR Soluciones’ customers are usually medium-sized companies that seek consultancy services and need help optimizing their servers.

There are six physical servers divided into two clusters and over 200 virtual machines (VMs) in the company’s offices. Most of the VMs are web servers on which the company hosts web applications developed by the software department, as well as customer webpages. VMs also host Microsoft Active Directory and file servers. IR Soluciones manages customers’ IT projects; thus, this sensitive data needs to be protected safely at all times. All data must be backed up, replicated and recovered quickly in case of any data losses. Essentially, IR Soluciones needs their data to be available 24/7. The software department must have backup copies in order to be able to recover previous versions of the VMs. The communications department depends on the availability of backups, as well.

Solution

NAKIVO Backup & Replication has been protecting IR Soluciones’ data and applications since the company was established in 2015. “We have been relying on NAKIVO Backup & Replication for more than five years and we are extremely satisfied with the NAKIVO team and the solution itself. Instead of switching to another solution, we still continue being a NAKIVO customer due to the excellent combination of functionalities paired with the professional support service,” says Alberto Hijazo Barceló, IT Manager at IR Soluciones.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is installed as a pre-configured virtual appliance in IR Soluciones’ environment, and the company chose a Netgear NAS box as a repository. “Installing the solution is intuitive and all the steps are easy to follow without any prior training. The web interface is complete and has many useful options. Our technical team has installed the software many times without any critical incidents,” says Alberto.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides IR Soluciones with different types of backups, including virtual, server, and Microsoft Office 365 backup and different types of repositories. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides an all-in-one backup system, where software and different types of hardware can be integrated together. VM backup is done every day and is completed overnight. The backup time, of course, depends on the machine. Secondly, we take advantage of both VM backup and Windows server backup. Finally, backup copies can be configured automatically in a way that won’t interrupt the company’s working hours,” says Alberto.

IR Soluciones benefits the most from backup copy and Active Directory integration in terms of available functionalities. Both features have saved the company time since no manual help from the IT team is required. “Active Directory integration is important for us in order to manage our IT system. VM replication and Instant VM recovery are also highly appreciated because we can recover all the data instantly if an unexpected event occurs. Moreover, it’s an easy and fast process whenever we need to recover a VM. The fast recoveries allowed us to continue working as usual, without losing any data,” says Alberto.

Results

“For us, the most important aspect was to have all the backup elements integrated into just one solution. Besides, the solution should be easy and fast to use and manage. NAKIVO Backup & Replication fulfills all of these aspects and this is why we have been a NAKIVO customer for more than five years. In addition, we value the automated backup system that makes backup copies without any manual intervention. Our experience with NAKIVO’s support has always been pleasant, as the support team has always been predisposed to answer any kind of technical question that we might have,” says Alberto.

About IR Soluciones

IR Soluciones is a startup company that emerged in 2015 as a subsidiary of a technology group with 20 years of experience in the IT sector. IR Soluciones provides software and systems engineering, datacenter and communications solutions, and IT project consulting. The IT projects developed by IR Soluciones are of great national and international projection, applying the latest technologies to service medium-sized companies and corporations. For more information, visit www.irsoluciones.com.