A Chain of Health Centers Recovers VMs 20X Faster with NAKIVO

Business Challenge

Zufall Health is a healthcare provider offering high-quality and affordable medical and dental care to the community, with 11 locations in north, west, and central New Jersey. The mission of Zufall Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center, is to improve the health and quality of life of the residents of the communities they serve by providing high quality, culturally competent, affordable care, regardless of their income or insurance status.

Zufall Health’s IT infrastructure is spread across two New Jersey sites. Their virtual environment consists primarily of VMware ESXi hosts, but they also have Microsoft Hyper-V servers. Nearly 50 VMs run Microsoft Exchange servers, file servers, Microsoft SQL servers, FTP servers, and special medical software. The many healthcare professionals at Zufall Health require immediate access to the patient records in order to diagnose and treat them appropriately, so this information needs to be reliably protected. If Zufall Health cannot back up their critical data every day, they risk losing important data. This data loss could have a huge impact on the organization’s daily operations, up to the point of shutting down their health center.

Over the last two years, Zufall Health used two different VM backup solutions, and neither product met the organization’s expectations. “Our first VM backup solution corrupted our VMs on a regular basis, and when we tried to recover them from the VM backups, we were often unsuccessful. Thus, we had to rebuild VMs manually, which was an extremely time-consuming process. Our second VM backup software worked better but still was not an ideal solution. With this product, VM recovery time was usually 20 minutes, but definitely not near-instant. In addition, we wanted to copy our VM backups to the cloud, but the solution did not support such functionality. We started investigating other VM backup solutions. We ultimately wanted a perfect combination of ease of use, pricing, and functionality. Functionality was at the top of the priority list, as we wanted to decrease VM recovery time, replicate VMs offsite, and have the option to back up VMs to cloud,” says Alex Martinez, Network Administrator at Zufall Health.

Solution

Zufall Health replaced their last VM backup solution with NAKIVO Backup & Replication. NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides reliable VM backup and quick VM recovery. The product also ensures Zufall Health centers have 24/7 availability of critical data, so that their healthcare professionals can fully utilize patient information and records. “My first impression of NAKIVO Backup & Replication was immensely positive. Even during the testing period, we noticed faster VM backup and recovery performance, and we greatly appreciated the fact that agents needed to be installed. The pre-configured virtual appliance was our preferred installation option, and the whole configuration process was a breeze. Moreover, the web user interface delivers additional simplicity, because navigation through all the menus is clean and intuitive,” says Alex.

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, VM backup is remarkably fast, allowing Zufall Health to back up all of their VMs every day. VM backup used to take at least 8 hours, but with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, now takes 15 minutes on average. “With the previous VM backup solution, I would come to the office in the morning, and the backup jobs would still be running from the previous night. Now, the forever-incremental backup takes only 15 minutes. On top of that, with screenshot verification, we can immediately verify our VM backups on a daily basis to make sure that the VMs can be recovered. We did not have such functionality with the past product, and it is a very reassuring feature to have,” says Alex.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication also provides Zufall Health with additional functionality that was not possible before. Zufall Health can now replicate VMs offsite and back up VMs to cloud. “We are looking forward to implementing VM backup to cloud in the near future. We are slowly building our disaster recovery strategy and want to avoid storing all our data in one place. We have already taken advantage of VM replication. We create VM replicas and store them in our secondary location, so that if something happens to our primary office, we can instantly turn on the VM replicas offsite,” says Alex.

In addition to VM replication, Zufall Health uses NAKIVO Backup & Replication to recover both entire VMs and application objects (Microsoft Exchange and SQL objects). “When an email was accidentally deleted, I was able to quickly recover that email with instant object recovery for Microsoft Exchange. Furthermore, with instant VM recovery, we are able to recover a full VM in just a minute. Previously, to recover a small VM, we needed 20 minutes or so, but with NAKIVO Backup & Replication’s Flash VM Boot, a much larger VM can be recovered in just one minute. Essentially, this is 20X faster. When I first experienced this feature, I honestly could not believe the results,” says Alex.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides Zufall Health centers with reliable VM backup, instant VM recovery, and the ability to replicate VMs offsite. Zufall Health can back up their VMs within approximately 15 minutes, and they can recover large VMs within just one minute, which is 20X faster than with their past VM backup solution. With VM replication, the organization can create VM replicas and store them offsite, so that in the event of a disaster at the primary location, the VM replicas can be instantly booted at the secondary location. “When we compare NAKIVO Backup & Replication to the previous VM backup solution, it’s like day and night. Not only did we improve VM backup performance and VM recovery times, but we also now save a significant amount of time on backup management. I no longer have to check the logs daily, as I did with the previous VM backup solution. Ultimately, NAKIVO Backup & Replication is the best choice for us in terms of pricing, ease of use, and performance,” says Alex.

About Zufall Health

Zufall Health provides quality, affordable, and culturally competent health care in partnership with their patients and the community in northern and central New Jersey. As a fully licensed Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), Zufall Health provides high-quality, affordable medical and dental care and other enabling services. At Zufall Health, all patients are welcomed regardless of their income or insurance status. The organization promotes a comprehensive continuum of care, treating patients from birth through their senior years. Zufall Health’s staff of board-certified physicians, dentists, and nurse practitioners is committed to eliminate health disparities and to improve the quality of life of their community. For more information, please visit www.zufallhealth.org.