NAKIVO Enables Road Tanker Manufacturer to Recover Files and VMs 60X faster

Business Challenge

The IT team at GRW has moved to virtualization with the aim to facilitate daily business operations. The company's infrastructure is VMware-virtualized and runs VMs with Microsoft SQL Servers and Oracle databases, Active Directory, Sage X3 ERP, CRM, Access Control Appl., as well as file, email, and application servers. Being committed to superior service and operational excellence, GRW depends on access to these mission-critical VMs to ensure the fast delivery of high-quality services to its customers.

The IT department was not satisfied with their existing backup solution, because it was slow, unreliable, and could not recover files from VM backups. One of the GRW's primary goals was to reduce the downtime of VMs which run the most important business-critical workloads. "Recovering VMs and files from backups was time-consuming and complex," said Milko Mihov, IT manager at GRW. "We had to spend nearly 3 hours to recover a single file, because we first had to rebuild the entire VM and then recover the file. This was unacceptable, since downtime is not tolerated in our business."

Solution

Milko began looking for a replacement to their legacy solution that would meet the company's specific requirements. "After testing several data protection products, we realized that NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a clear winner," said Milko. "The product gives us reliability and features that enable our business to run smoothly even in case of infrastructure failure."

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is built specifically for VMware environments, features near-continuous data protection, changed block tracking, compression, and multi-threaded VM processing. By unifying VM backup and replication in a single solution, NAKIVO can deliver fast and reliable VM backup, replication, and recovery. "With advanced functionality and leading recovery performance, NAKIVO Backup & Replication delivers the greatest value versus the alternatives for protecting our virtualized environment," said Milko.

Results

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication GRW has reduced VM and file recovery time from 3 hours to nearly 3 minutes. "Backup speed is important, but recovery speed is even more important," said Milko. "With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, VM and file recovery is 60X faster than our previous solution, enabling us to have greater overall uptime while also replicating our VMs more frequently to meet shorter recovery point objectives."

Company Profile

GRW was founded in 1996 with the mission to build world-class road tankers conforming to the highest international quality standards. Now GRW has developed into a multi-tiered company that designs and manufactures superior road tankers for the bulk transport market and also provides essential maintenance, repair, and financial services to fleet operators across Southern Africa and the United Kingdom. The company is the preferred fuel tanker supplier locally and in the UK.

The GRW's success lies in the uncompromising approach to quality: all tankers are manufactured in an ultra-modern facility with automated welding procedures and state-of-the-art equipment. GRW has gained international accreditation and builds tankers adhering to the complete set of European ADR (Agreement on International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road) standards. Being one-hundred-percent committed to excellence, GRW has won a large number of local and international awards, including the first position in the Best Supplier of Trailers/Bodies category of the prestigious Focus on Excellence Awards. For more information, visit www.grw.co.za.