NAKIVO Helps an IT Service Provider Save 11 Hours a Month on VMware Backup Management
Business Challenge
Kostax s.r.o. is a Czech company that provides IT solutions and services to its customers. The company’s customers comprise educational institutions, government authorities, state administration bodies, and production plants, as well as small and medium-sized businesses. Kostax covers everything related to the design, delivery, operation, support, and management of information systems and services.
Kostax’s IT infrastructure is spread across two sites and is fully virtualized. At the headquarters, VMware VMs run a variety of servers, including a data server, a Microsoft Exchange server, a Microsoft Active Directory server, and a Microsoft SQL server, while VMs at the hosting location run terminal services, open-source web servers, and open-source mail servers. Backup of all critical IT systems is essential because the company needs to be able to recover all their VMware VMs or move them elsewhere in the event of a disaster or hardware failure.
In the past, Kostax had been using a legacy data protection approach that was based on physical server backup via open-source utilities, however, the features and functionality of their previous solution were not up to par. “The functionality of the previous solution was not the best, and did not support our virtualized environment appropriately. The whole process of backing up VMs was cumbersome and required us to spend at least 30 minutes a day on backup verification. Secondly, we did not have the basic features that most VM backup solutions offer nowadays. Overall, we were concerned about the protection of our IT systems and needed a reliable VM backup solution that would protect not only our internal data, but also the data of our customers,” says Daniel Beták, CEO at Kostax.
Solution
Bakotech, a value-added distributor, initially introduced NAKIVO Backup & Replication to Kostax. Kostax has chosen NAKIVO Backup & Replication to protect their own virtual environment and, being a NAKIVO Silver Partner, resells the product to its customers. NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers comprehensive data protection functionality that covers the requirements of both Kostax and their customers at a reasonable price.
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Kostax now protects entire VMware VMs with forever-incremental backup. “In contrast to our previous approach, we’re now performing image-based backup of our VMware VMs, so that the backup contains everything required for VM recovery,” says Daniel.
At Kostax, backup jobs are now scheduled to run several times a day – every 30 minutes. Backup jobs finish within various amounts of time, with some taking just a few minutes to complete. “For sure, the whole process of backup and backup verification is much faster now with NAKIVO Backup & Replication. We used to spend at least 30 minutes a day on backup verification, but now, we do not spend any time at all on this, as the software runs automatically. We were also pleasantly surprised that some backup jobs now take only a few minutes a day,” says Daniel.
In addition to the VM backup functionality, Kostax can now also store backup copies offsite to safeguard data from a disaster. “With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we are also able to copy backups across the WAN to our secondary location, and that was not possible with our previous solution at all, so all this extra functionality is fantastic. Backup Copy provides an extra layer of reliability and protection for our IT systems,” says Daniel.
The decision to switch from the previous legacy backup system was attributed to concerns over data protection, and now with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, all data and applications are protected in the most secure and reliable way.
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Kostax can recover files, Microsoft Exchange objects, Microsoft Active Directory objects, and Microsoft SQL objects directly from compressed and deduplicated VM backups. “I really like the simplicity and ease of recovering a particular file or object from a specific recovery point,” says Daniel. In the future, the company aims to try out and implement some of the other features that NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides, such as network acceleration, global data deduplication, LAN-free backup, and instant VM Recovery.
Results
NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides Kostax a robust solution for protecting VMware VMs with image-based and forever-incremental backup. With Backup Copy, the company is able to keep extra copies of backups offsite, so that their most important VM backups remain safe and secure even if a disaster affects the whole of the primary location. Lastly, instant file recovery and instant object recovery allow them to recover files, Microsoft Exchange objects, Microsoft Active Directory objects, and Microsoft SQL objects near-instantly. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a comprehensive, fast, and fully-featured VM backup solution for protecting virtual environments. The software provides us with new functionality and features, and a variety of possibilities for backing up our VMware VMs. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we achieved the highest level of protection and reliability for our data,” says Daniel.
About Kostax
Founded in 1994, Kostax s.r.o. is a leading IT service provider from České Budějovice, Czech Republic. The company handles the design and maintenance of network infrastructure, telephone and telecommunication systems, security systems, and video surveillance systems. In addition, Kostax s.r.o. offers sells, delivers and services computer equipment, storage, servers, and workstations. Kostax’s customers range from small and medium-sized businesses to local government institutions and state authorities. Over the years, Kostax s.r.o. has established successful partnerships with such companies as Microsoft, IBM, HP, Helios, and others. Throughout the company’s existence, the provision of high-quality and reasonably-priced services and solutions was constantly emphasized through their employees’ high level of expertise. For more information, visit kostax.cz.