NAKIVO VM Backup Appliance Based on QNAP NAS Increases VM Backup Speed by 8X for an IT Company

Business Challenge

Headquartered in Germany, TIS (Treasury Intelligence Solutions GmbH) is a leading cloud platform for managing corporate payments and cash flows. TIS designed and built their custom solution to enable companies to make more efficient, more secure, and more cost-effective payment transactions. In addition, TIS enables customers to make better decisions when analyzing financial and operational performance based on real-time payment flows.

TIS’s IT infrastructure is spread out across two data centers in Germany that are 200km away from each other. The company’s virtual environment consists of 10 physical servers and almost 200 VMware VMs. Their VMs run multiple business systems, applications, and databases. Protecting business-critical systems and applications is a top business priority for TIS, as the data needs to be reliably backed up so it can be fully recovered in case of a disaster. If critical systems cannot be recovered, TIS runs the risks of data loss and downtime.

“Formerly, we were using two different backup solutions. With the last backup solution, we experienced long backup times. Moreover, VM storage space was slowly becoming an issue, as we needed more storage space to store our backups. In addition, the software was complicated in terms of its configuration, and it would take us significant time to fully comprehend its entire functionality. As this backup solution was being discontinued by VMware, we decided that it was the perfect time to switch to a more modern and efficient VM backup solution. We already had a QNAP NAS device on the premises, and we wanted to find a VM backup solution that would integrate well with our NAS. Furthermore, we wanted to achieve fast VM backup performance and save VM storage space,” says Wotan von Klass, Director of Engineering at TIS.

Solution

NAKIVO Backup & Replication was selected by TIS to protect their business-critical systems. The product now ensures their data availability through a combination of VM backup, VM replication, backup copy, global data deduplication and compression, and software’s integration with QNAP NAS. By installing NAKIVO Backup & Replication directly on their QNAP TVS-871U-RP NAS, TIS created a high-performance VM backup appliance that combines backup software, backup hardware, and storage in a single device.

“We wanted to increase VM backup speed by at least 2X – that is why we opted for installation on the QNAP NAS, as it was advertised as being the fastest option. We weren’t disappointed. The whole installation and configuration process was pretty simple and smooth – within a couple of clicks, we were ready to initiate our first backup job. Moreover, the web user interface is user-friendly, as you do not have to go to the different places to dig out and search for various options,” says Wotan.

As a result, with NAS installation, NAKIVO Backup & Replication helps TIS realize their primary goals, which were to increase VM backup speed and save VM storage space. “With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we noticed an immediate speed improvement, as VM backup jobs now complete up to 8X faster vs. our previous backup solution. On top of that, with global data deduplication and compression, we save VM storage space and achieve more efficient disk space utilization. Overall, we can now run more VM backup jobs because the speed is better, and store more VM backups in our backup repository because of the space-saving features,” says Wotan.

TIS uses NAKIVO Backup & Replication not only to back up VMs on site, but also to copy backups from their local data center to the remote data center, as well as to replicate their most business-critical VMs for disaster recovery. “By keeping an extra copy of backups in our secondary location, we are basically safeguarding our data from any failures that might happen in our primary location. With VM replication, we create VM replicas so we have the ability to near-instantly fail over from source VM to VM replica, in case of disaster. We really wanted to have our data in multiple places, and NAKIVO Backup & Replication’s functionality allowed us to achieve this,” says Wotan.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication also encrypts TIS’s data on site, in flight and at rest. The VM backup encryption ensures that TIS’s data safe and secure from unauthorized readers or hackers. Finally, in the near future, TIS will be implementing the product’s screenshot verification feature, in order to be able to near-instantly verify VMware VM backups and replicas. They also plan on taking advantage of the Flash VM Boot feature to near-instantly recover entire VMs.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication installed on QNAP NAS gives TIS increased VM backup performance and VM storage space savings with global data deduplication and compression. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, TIS can back up their VMs on site, copy backups to a secondary location, and replicate VMs as well. Overall, with the software installed on QNAP NAS, TIS can complete VM backup jobs 8X faster on average. “With NAKIVO Backup & Replication we definitely save time, as our VM backups are much faster compared to our previous backup solution. On top of that, we received additional functionality that we did not have before – VM replication and backup copy. Lastly, the QNAP NAS installation and user-friendly web interface also saved considerable time for us; now the whole backup process is much easier to understand and manage,” says Wotan.

About TIS

Since 2010, Treasury Intelligence Solutions GmbH has been combining their treasury management experience and know-how with their cloud computing and virtualization expertise. The TIS solution is the result of these efforts: a comprehensive, highly scalable, and extremely secure SaaS solution to process, analyze, and document all treasury management processes. Implementing this solution as a web application delivers critical advantages for TIS’s internationally operating customers, such as the fastest possible integration times, immediate worldwide roll-outs, and problem-free updates. The TIS solution has been deployed successfully at medium-sized and large corporate customers, such as Fujitsu, DACHSER, BearingPoint, VW, and Swiss Airlines, for years. For more information, please visit tispayments.com.