NAKIVO Enables Wholesale VoIP Provider to Back Up 2X More, Spend 30% Less Time on Backup Administration

Business Challenge

Simwood is a leading provider of international carrier services with wholesale IP telephony and a portfolio of quality managed services. Located in the United Kingdom, Simwood runs a national IP network with 11 data centers. "We have a modest estate of 125 VMs," says Simon Woodhead, CEO of Simwood. "Most of our VMs are for our internal systems, handling billing and analysis for millions of calls per day. All our web properties, API, and fraud systems run there too," says Simon.

Previously, Simwood's virtual infrastructure was protected by two VM backup solutions that failed to meet the data protection needs of the company. The first product required constant monitoring and did not offer flexible licensing. "Our first backup solution needed continual nannying. This, combined with a dictatorial approach to licensing, lead us to bin it," says Simon. The second backup solution worked well at first, but later several issues emerged. "The lack of VSAN support was a problem for us," says Simon. "VM backups were very slow and that caused issues with our high IO VMs, since they were in a snapshotted state for so long that eventual release was quite a heavy operation. In addition, larger VMs, such as archive nodes, invariably failed."

The disadvantages of the previous data protection solutions forced Simwood to look for a replacement. "The issues prevented us from backing up our entire estate and we had to leave out our busiest and most critical VMs. This forced us to shop around for a better alternative," says Simon.

Solution

Simwood came across NAKIVO Backup & Replication in search for a better data solution and the company was impressed with fast and easy deployment, web GUI, and overall simplicity of the product. Intuitive web user interface of the product enables managing all aspects of data protection at any time and from anywhere. Moreover, the product can be deployed in multiple ways. "I love that it is web-based and can be deployed as an appliance," says Simon.

The virtual appliance deployment is fast and flexible: "I like that appliance is actually open, so we can make network configuration changes that are outside the scope of the GUI directly rather than involving support and a screen sharing session. Moreover, the virtual appliance can back up any VM under the control of the vCenter, regardless of whether it is on a host with access to the storage," says Simon. "Therefore, with the virtual appliance, less critical VMs, that previously did not justify the need for multiple localized appliances, can be backed up."

In addition, NAKIVO Backup & Replication has simplified backup administration for Simwood. "We don’t need to worry about the backup type, it's forever incremental. NAKIVO Backup & Replication just takes care of it, so we're not spending time performing multiple different types of backup," says Simon.

Most importantly, VM backup speed was considerably improved in comparison to previously used backup solutions. "Even with CBT, the other solutions would be doing something internal (beyond releasing the snapshot) in between backups, giving a long delay between one finishing and the next starting. With lots of VMs this made backups slow. NAKIVO is really quick to backup with no delays between VMs," says Simon. NAKIVO can run multiple VM backups simultaneously, which speeds up data processing and shortens the time windows allocated to data protection.

Overall, after a testing period, NAKIVO outperformed other evaluated backup solutions previously used by Simwood, and proved to be superior. "NAKIVO works without nannying. We don't check the appliances every few days to find that they need a reboot. With NAKIVO, we get useful meaningful reports on what has gone right and what has gone wrong," says Simon.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is now used to protect VMware environment at Simwood and has demonstrated great results in usage, management, and performance. With NAKIVO, the entire virtual infrastructure can now be fully backed up, without leaving out the most critical VMs. "We can now back up all our VMs, both the high IO ones (because the higher backup speed reduces the time it takes for a backup to complete) and the large archive nodes," says Simon.

With advanced reports from NAKIVO, Simwood is always up to date on jobs status. "The reports mean that we don't need to worry about whether backups have actually happened or not. So far, we haven't had to reboot an appliance just to keep things working," says Simon. However, the greatest achieved result for Simwood is in the time saved for performing VM backups. “We are able to backup twice as much (in byte terms). We saved 30% of time that was previously used on nannying," says Simon.

Company Profile

Since 1996, Simwood has been quietly pioneering the industries in which it operates; starting with creating the first global commercial gateway between the Internet and SMS text messaging. Since then the business has evolved into the wholesale voice operator that exists today, with a wholly owned national IP network spanning 11 data centers and SS7 interconnects with major carriers all delivered to customers through a market-leading API and portal which is backed by their unique and innovative fraud prevention systems. Simwood proudly boasts over 800 wholesale accounts ranging from single-man hosted PBX operators right up to several multinational mobile operators. Simwood has also been investing heavily in its new mobile product which offers communication providers a whole new level of access to mobile services including full control of voice, text, data traffic, mobile numbering, porting and SIM branding. Learn more at simwood.com.