NAKIVO Reduces RTO and RPO from Days to Hours for a UK Cloud Provider

Business Challenge

Established in 2003, Cloud Direct is a CSP headquartered in Bath, United Kingdom. The company provides scalable technologies for secure, productive, and agile businesses, so that they can compete and grow in line with industry regulations. Cloud Direct specializes in security, cloud computing, VoIP telephony, data communications, virtualization, disaster recovery, business applications and business continuity.

Cloud Direct’s IT infrastructure consists of two sites, however, by being a managed service provider (MSP), the company also offers VM backup and disaster recovery services to its customers. Cloud Direct aims to protect the entire infrastructure of its customers, that usually includes, but is not limited to mail services, file services, authentication services, and database services. Helping customers achieve data availability 24/7 has always been Cloud Direct’s main goal. This means not only meeting service level agreements (SLAs), but also providing its customers with a level of assurance that in an event of a disaster, they will be able to quickly and effectively return to a full operating state.

“Previously, we had used various VM backup solutions that had multiple issues and difficulties. Some were slow and difficult to setup and operate, while others required additional time and resources to manage backup jobs. Our challenge was finding a reliable, fast and scalable VM backup solution at a right price point. We wanted a product that would provide our customers with quicker restores and lower recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). In addition, we needed to provide our customers with a portal into the software, where they could manage their backup jobs,” says Rhys Evans, Technical Consultant at Cloud Direct.

Solution

By selecting NAKIVO Backup & Replication as the VM backup solution, Cloud Direct is now able to provide its multiple customers with a comprehensive VM disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution, reliable data protection, and fast recovery of files, objects and full VMs. NAKIVO Backup & Replication not only provides increased backup speed, but also eliminates the complexity of backup thus decreasing the time spent on IT administration. “By implementing NAKIVO Backup & Replication as a pre-configured virtual appliance via Puppet, the product has not only been relatively painless to install, but has significantly reduced our overall administration overhead and update times by approximately 90%,” says Rhys.

With VM replication, Cloud Direct protects customers’ critical business services from different problems that can occur in a datacenter. “With the help of VM replication, depending on our customers’ requirements, we aim to reduce their RPOs and RTOs in the event of a disaster. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, in most cases we managed to cut RPOs and RTOs from days to hours - in some cases even to less than an hour,” says Rhys.

While Cloud Direct mostly uses the VM replication feature, they are starting to implement more and more backup solutions for customers, as the product has proven to be reliable and easy to implement and maintain. “Excluding the initial full VM backup, we are usually looking at backup times that average fewer than 10 minutes per VM. Of course, however, that speed usually depends on the connectivity both from our side and the customer’s side. Furthermore, we are seeing a higher data deduplication rate compared to our previous VM backup solution. We are looking forward to using the VM backup feature to its full potential in the future,” says Rhys.

NAKIVO’s multi-tenancy for VM backup and replication enables Cloud Direct to manage multiple cloud backup customers under a single pane of glass. “Multi-tenancy allows our customers to manage their own backup, replication, and recovery jobs without our involvement. This not only saves time and support costs, but also speeds up the recovery of files, objects and full VMs for our customers,” says Rhys.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication installed as a pre-configured virtual appliance, provides ease of use and flexibility and saves IT administration time for Cloud Direct. NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows Cloud Direct to offer a comprehensive VM disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution to customers, while cutting RTOs and RPOs from days to hours. With the help of multi-tenancy, the company saves time and resources and no longer spins dedicated solutions for each of its customers. “With previous VM backup solutions, we experienced NAT issues, however, with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we reduced our management times around troubleshooting and upgrades. Previously, we had different solutions for different hypervisors, but NAKIVO brought our current VM DRaaS service into a single pane of glass, “says Rhys.

Company Profile

Cloud Direct helps ambitious organizations adopt Microsoft cloud. Their customers know that the right technology can free them to grow – offering increased security, productivity and agility. But their customers are cautious. So, Cloud Direct’s job is to make their cloud journey safe and affordable.

Since 2003, Cloud Direct has helped 4,000 organizations move their IT to the cloud. They are a direct gold Microsoft cloud services provider (CSP) partner. They hold ISO 27001:2013 (for security) and ISO 20000 (for service). At 75% their Net Promoter Score is world-class. 24/7 support ensures continual service delivery. For more information, please visit www.clouddirect.net.