Australian Collectible Dealer Downies Chooses Nakivo

Downies Collectables Pty. Ltd., a 85 years as a family-run business specializing in coins, stamps, banknotes, model cars, and other collectibles, has selected Nakivo Backup & Replication to protect its environment.

Downies operates from multiple locations with a range of IT services, including its SAP environment. The business has 3 main sites, with all servers located on the one site. All servers are virtualized using Hyper-V. VMs run Microsoft Active Directory, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), as well as time and attendance, payroll, and ERP systems. The ERP system, the most critical for Downies, consumes the most resources and runs across 7 VMs.

Mostly, Downies uses backups for recovery of individual files. However, the business also needs to ensure that if a disaster happens, systems are up and running quickly. The business cannot afford downtime for longer than a day. If data is unavailable for more than a week, the whole business would have to shut down.

Downie’s previous VM backup solution became outdated and required regular maintenance and monitoring. Moreover, additional software was needed to perform various tasks. Backup jobs regularly failed and required manual intervention. Other software was used to perform backup to tape and backup to disk.

The company needs to backup about 25 VMs and 70 Microsoft 365 mailboxes, as well as replicate critical servers to a secondary site. It decided to search for a new solution that can provide all the functionalities under one roof as well as offer time and money savings.

Backup & Replication is an all-in-one data protection solution for virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS environments. The product protects business data and applications.

“Backup & Replication has good reviews on multiple websites and offers all the needed functionalities, ranging from backup to DR, in one simple solution,” says Hamid Osmani, IT manager, Downies. “The support service has also been good with a quick response time. The installation process was simple and rapid. I had to look at the technical documentation to do some of the setups, but I was able to backup servers in no time after that.“

“We have installed Nakivo Backup & Replication on an individual server with storage. The tape drive is also connected to the same server, so the tape jobs can run, during business operating hours and will not cause any congestion on the network,” he added. “Our replication server is offsite, and this will be our DR site if something critical was to happen to our primary site. Currently, we are backing up 10 workloads fairly quickly. Our production server is backed up every 2 hours and the development servers are backed up once a day.“

Backup & Replication provides fast backup and easy recovery for Downies, as well as offers VM replication and backup for Microsoft 365.

“Recovery of individual files, via the browser is what we find extremely handy for us. Also, being able to backup to disk and to tape, setup VM replication to the remote site, and backup Microsoft 365 mailboxes is incredible because everything can be done from the same web interface,” says Osmani. “BC is key for us and with VM replication, we can recover a server in no time at all. Since moving to Microsoft 365, we did not have a solution that supported Microsoft 365 backup. Now, we have achieved complete protection of our Microsoft 365 data from a centralized web interface, and do not need any additional tools.“

“Backup & Replication is a robust data protection solution that provides multiple functionalities with minimal workarounds. With the product, we have backup to disk, backup to tape, VM replication, and Microsoft 365 backup, all from the same centralized web interface,” he added. “With the product’s technical support, we are always taken care of in terms of receiving answers to our questions. Backup & Replication helped Downies maintain BC and achieve results much quicker and without the need for constant maintenance and monitoring. In terms of cash spent, we saved nearly 20%, but the time savings are a much bigger advantage for us.“