NAKIVO Helps a Non-Profit Reduce RTO by 5 Hours
Business Challenge
Founded in 1990, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) is a not-for-profit, international medical organization with nearly 35,000 members. It is the biggest society in Europe in its field. With members in over 140 countries, the ERS aims to alleviate suffering from the respiratory disease and to promote lung health through research, knowledge sharing, medical and public education.
The European Respiratory Society (ERS) is located in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the organization’s IT infrastructure consists of three physical servers and 20 VMware VMs. The information that is stored in the VMware VMs is divided into three types: the user’s infrastructure with DHCP, file, print, and backup servers, the applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), SAP, an internally developed CRM, and web servers. Keeping the data and applications available is a challenge, so it is vital for the organization to have a reliable and stable VM backup and recovery.
“While our main goal is research, science, and education, we also need a powerful and stable IT infrastructure to support our mission. A large number of members and employees need continuous access to data and applications for research and communication purposes, so safeguarding our critical data is the main priority for us,” says Stéphane Dupasquier, IT Director at the European Respiratory Society. “We were using a different VM backup solution for quite some time, until we learned that the vendor was removing this product from their suit of software because the product was no longer being produced. What we initially did not like was that the product’s interface was complicated and required a client installation. Basically, we wanted to find a new VM backup solution that would provide simple management, reliable and fast VM backup, and data deduplication done in one step.”
Solution
Alltron introduced NAKIVO Backup & Replication to the European Respiratory Society (ERS) as a potential replacement for the organization’s past VM backup solution, so after trial period and testing, NAKIVO Backup & Replication was chosen to protect critical data and applications at ERS. NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides fast and flexible VM backup, recovery, and global data deduplication for VMware and helps the staff at ERS spend less time on backup administration. The product offers multiple deployment options, including a pre-configured virtual appliance that can be easily imported into VMware vSphere. “With pre-configured VMware virtual appliance, installation and configuration was easy, clear, and straightforward and the whole process was completed in maximum two hours. The previous VM backup solution was more complex and took time to get used to, while with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, not only is deployment time lower, but also web interface provides much appreciated ease of use and management,” says Stéphane.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication protects VMware VMs at ERS with application-aware backup and forever-incremental backup. Due to VMware Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology, VM backup is done faster. “We back up our VMware VMs every night and it takes an hour and a half to back up 4TB of data. Thanks to CBT, VM backups are faster because only changed data gets transferred to the backup repository,” says Stéphane. Using NAKIVO’s global data deduplication feature helps ERS save approximately 3TB in disk space, so that more space is left for storing VM backups. More efficient disk space utilization allows not only to store more VM backups, but also provides lower direct storage costs.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows ERS to quickly recover full VMs, which gives an organization an extra level of security of knowing that if VMs are accidently deleted or damaged, they can be brought up quickly. Instant VM recovery feature near-instantly recovers entire VMs from their backups. “We like the fact that we do not need to fully recover the entire VM first, but by just choosing a VM backup and pushing a couple of buttons, the VM boots near-instantly. This feature helps reduce recovery time objective (RTO) by approximately 5 hours,” says Stéphane.
Results
NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides European Respiratory society with fast VM backup and recovery, as well as storage space savings. Due to near-instant full VM recovery, the organization cut recovery time objective (RTO) by 5 hours. With global data deduplication, 3TB in disk space was saved, so that more space is left to keep VM backups. “Honestly, we did not have significant problems with our previous VM backup solution, but NAKIVO Backup & Replication works perfectly and fully fulfills our needs not only with fast VM backup and recovery, but also with much appreciated ease of use and management that web interface provides. In addition, NAKIVO Backup & Replication is 10% cheaper than the previous VM backup tool. NAKIVO Backup & Replication safeguards our VMs and their data and makes sure that we can easily recover in case of an emergency,” says Stéphane.
About European Respiratory Society
The European Respiratory Society (ERS) is an international organization that brings together physicians, healthcare professionals, scientists, and other experts working in respiratory medicine. ERS is one of the leading medical organizations in the respiratory field, with a growing membership representing over 140 countries. The mission is to promote lung health, in order to alleviate suffering from disease and drive standards for respiratory medicine globally. Science, education, and advocacy are at the core of everything ERS does. ERS is involved in promoting scientific research and providing access to high-quality educational resources. It also plays a key role in advocacy – raising awareness of lung disease amongst the public and politicians. For more information, please visit www.ersnet.org.