NAKIVO Helps China Airlines Instantly Recover VMs, Save 60% of Storage Space, Cut Budget by 30%

NAKIVO Backup & Replication enables China Airlines, one of the leading airlines in Asia, to instantly recover mission-critical VMs, reduce backup storage space by 60% with data deduplication, and cut VMware backup budget by 30%.

www.china-airlines.com

Business Challenge

Established in 1959 in Taoyuan City, Taiwan, China Airlines is one of the leading airline carriers in Asia. The company is headquartered in Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and has over 12,600 employees as of August 2016. The airline operates in 4 continents, 143 destinations in 29 countries/districts, and deploys 92 aircraft.

China Airlines' IT infrastructure consists of two data centers. "We have more than 60 VMware ESXi hosts and over 900 VMs. The VMs run our core applications, including our GPS system, Flight system, OA system, Microsoft SQL, Exchange, and file servers, and other workloads," says Stivan Chou, China Airlines’ Representative.

At China Airlines, VMware VMs run both business-critical applications that are in charge of their daily operations and processes, and the airline’s website that provides customers with up to date information regarding flights, bookings, and check-in options. "We have to keep our data safe because we are in the aviation industry. Data loss and downtime will significantly impact our business, so in case of an emergency, we need to recover instantly," says Stivan.

"With our previous backup software, VM recovery was always longer than we expected. Moreover, this legacy product did not support the latest version of VMware, so when we upgraded our system to the newest version, we could not do backups. We urgently needed to find another solution that could handle our 900 VMware VMs, perform fast VM backup and recovery, and read data directly from disks, bypassing the network," says Stivan.

Solution

"We found NAKIVO Backup & Replication online and were instantly intrigued by its rich feature set," says Stivan. While NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be installed on Windows and Linux, deployment as a pre-configured Virtual Appliance offers an additional simplicity and efficiency. "It was quite straightforward to import an OVA with NAKIVO Backup & Replication appliance into our vSphere environment. We did not have to install and configure an operating system. NAKIVO Backup & Replication appliance saves time and does not require constant attention," says Stivan.

"It is imperative for us to save backup time because we have 900 VMs to deal with. Daily backups should be performed in 8 hours. After using Hot Add that reads data directly from source VM disks, bypassing the network, we were able to reduce backup times by about 10 hours weekly," says Stivan. NAKIVO Backup & Replication automatically uses Hot Add to offload production LAN from the data protection traffic and increases the VMware backup and recovery speed.

The Flash VM Boot feature provided additional time savings for China Airlines. "VM recovery is way faster than with our previous backup solution. We use Flash VM Boot in emergency cases, and this feature has already saved us 2 hours of downtime," says Stivan. The Flash VM Boot feature enables China Airlines to boot VMs directly from compressed and deduplicated backups, eliminating the need to recover the entire VM first.

In addition to instant VM recovery, global data deduplication provided significant storage space savings for China Airlines. "Global data deduplication is another amazing feature. It reduced our storage space by about 60% and allows us to store more recovery points per VM backup. In addition, we were able to save money on direct storage costs and other costs, such as maintenance," says Stivan. NAKIVO Backup & Replication automatically deduplicates VM backups at the block level and saves only unique data to the backup repository.

Results

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, China Airlines performs VM backups every day. The company has reduced the backup time by 10 hours weekly with the Hot Add feature. Due to Instant VM Recovery, China Airlines achieved near-instant VM recovery and also reduced storage space by 60% with global data deduplication. "NAKIVO Backup & Replication is an outstanding product that offers great features and does not break the budget. The product saved management time by 35% and reduced our VMware backup budget by 30%," says Stivan.

Company Profile

Since being founded in 1959, China Airlines has been dedicated to delivering the best in-flight experience and quality to satisfy each passenger. Being one of the leading airlines in Asia, China Airlines provides routes to 4 continents including commercial flights and freight services. While joining SkyTeam as the 15th member on September 28th, 2011, China Airlines provides more services and promotional packages, connecting 178 countries and reaching more than 1,000 destinations. Its fleet consists of 92 Airbus and Boeing aircraft, including 71 passenger jets and 21 freighters. The airline’s subsidiaries include low-cost carriers Mandarin Airlines and Tigerair Taiwan. China Airlines is committed to the best flight quality, safety, and treasure every encounter. For more information, visit www.china-airlines.com.