NAKIVO Protects Hybrid Environment of a Holding Company

Gürallar Group, a Turkish holding company with businesses in several industries, selects NAKIVO Backup & Replication to protect its hybrid environment with VM backup and instant object recovery.

www.gurallar.com/

Business Challenge

Gürallar Group was founded more than 50 years ago. The group has several businesses spanning glass tableware and glass packaging manufacturing, roof tile manufacturing and machinery development. It also owns Gürallar Yapi, an immovable property investment and development company. Lastly, Gürallar Group owns the Ali Bey Hotels & Resorts brand and JOALI Maldives.

Gürallar Group headquarters is located in Kütahya, Turkey. The group’s data center has 10 physical servers and 50 virtual machines. Virtual machines store files, databases, web servers, document management applications, an ERP system and other applications. Server problems, malware, hacking threats, natural disasters and human errors pose a real threat to the business. That is why data protection and business continuity are key priorities for Gürallar Group. Loss of data can have a detrimental impact on the group, including disrupting manufacturing, withholding services and losing credibility in the eyes of customers, all of which would lead to financial losses.

Previously, Gürallar Group relied on another VMware backup solution. One of the issues faced repeatedly with that solution was failed jobs. In addition, the backup solution sometimes crashed due to internal database errors. These issues took too long to fix, diverting resources from other important activities. Gürallar Group wanted to keep their business running rather than constantly fixing errors. Recovery times were also rather long, and a whole day was needed to recover a virtual machine. At some point, Gürallar Group decided it was time to switch to a new backup solution that would provide fast performance, reliability and agility.

Solution

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a reliable data protection solution for physical, virtual, cloud and SaaS environments. The software offers a complete set of functionalities, including backup, replication, recovery, backup to cloud, backup to tape, granular recovery, data deduplication and Site Recovery. NAKIVO Backup & Replication is faster, more reliable and easier to manage than legacy solutions. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, there are multiple deployment options as well, including installation on Windows or Linux, installation on a NAS and deployment as a virtual appliance.

“We selected NAKIVO Backup & Replication due to the good Linux file system support and great data deduplication ratio. NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports a variety of different deployments and that is great to have options. For now, we just installed the product on a Linux OS. The installation process is easy to manage without external help, and the web interface is pretty self-explanatory,” says Yasar Ozkul, Senior Infrastructure and Network Specialist at Gürallar Group.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication performs fast and reliable backups of virtual machines, while saving effort and time. The product performs incremental backups of virtual machines by copying only the changed data blocks to the repository after the initial full backup. This approach saves backup time and storage space. “We perform backup jobs every day, and they are always incremental. Backup jobs complete successfully, and we no longer have to fix constant errors. For VM backup, I enjoy NAKIVO Backup & Replication because of short backup times and good data deduplication ratio. By having lower storage space requirements, we save money on direct storage costs and costs related to electricity,” says Yasar.

LAN-free data transfer also provides savings for the Gürallar Group, while with instant granular recovery, the group can recover application objects near-instantly. LAN-free data transfer increases VM backup speed and reduces the load on the network. “Instant object recovery for Microsoft Active Directory helped us a lot, as rapid recovery ensures business continuity. Active Directory databases can be instantly accessed from deduplicated VM backups and we can search for Active Directory objects and containers or download entire containers or objects. With our previous solution, such near-instant recovery was not possible,” says Yasar.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides Gürallar Group with fast and reliable VM backup, where backup jobs complete successfully and in a timely manner. The IT team no longer needs to spend hours on endless errors within the backup solution. NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports a broad array of file systems, including Linux file system. With instant object recovery, the group can recover Active Directory objects near-instantly as well. “We are satisfied with NAKIVO Backup & Replication so far, as the product delivers reliability, performance and agility. The support team is knowledgeable and fast, with someone responding to requests asap. NAKIVO Backup & Replication protects our hybrid environment with VM backup and ensures business continuity with quick recovery,” says Yasar.

About Gürallar Group

Gürallar Group commenced its business in 1948 as a family-owned company and claimed its rightful respected place among the largest private sector groups in the first quarter of the 21st century. The Group carried out the majority of its investments in the first year of its activity in and around Kütahya, Turkey, and significantly contributed to the socioeconomic and sociocultural development of the region. Adopting a long-term strategic perspective, the Group has achieved sustainable growth in different sectors from glass tableware to tourism, construction and machinery. For more information, visit www.gurallar.com.