German Research Institure FEhS Institute Chooses Nakivo

Nakivo Inc. announced that FEhS – Institut für Baustoff-Forschung e.V. – a German research institute – has selected its Backup & Replication to protect their VMware environment.

Headquartered in Duisburg, Germany, FEhS has experience in investigation and development of applications for industrial co-products and residues, especially in iron and steel-making. The company performs research on national and international level in the area of by-products, consulting in the field of recycling building materials and landfill, and evaluation of research projects.

“Our environment is quite simple. We have one site, one blade server housing with four used slots. The four machines are holding a total number of around 16 VMs. We also have one standalone server for our Oracle DB,” says Rene Griesa, data processing manager, FEhS. “The applications that we have are Exchange, WSUS, DNS, Licensing, VPN, Home and Groupshares, and Remote Workstations.“

The main focus of FEhS is research, development, and consulting, and so VM backup and VM recovery are imperative for the success of the business.

“Most of our research depends on an immense amount of historical data. Without a proper backup, we run a chance of losing historical data that was collected during the last 20 years,” says Griesa.

Previously, the institute protected its data with a legacy backup solution, however, the solution caused problems since jobs were failing constantly.

The previous backup solution did not work correctly with deduplicated Windows 2012 volumes and that caused even more problems for the IT department.

“I spent a considerable amount of time in the evening and on the weekends monitoring the VM backups. The backup solution gave me e-mail updates that backup jobs completed successfully. However, the core problem was that if I wanted to recover files, VM backups were not functional. Sometimes, the product recovered 20% of the files, other times 50%, but never all the files. Eventually, we found that deduplication from our Windows 2012 Server was causing this and saw that it was the fault of the backup solution,” says Griesa.

Backup & Replication was introduced to FEhS by their partner. The institute selected the pre-configured virtual appliance deployment option.

“Nakivo Backup & Replication was installed in a couple of minutes with the pre-configured Virtual Appliance. The configuration was simple and straightforward. After the installation, the first backup job ran for about 30 minutes – it just worked out of the box,” says Griesa. “The web interface is clear and you can always find the things you need without long searches.“

Backup & Replication provides features aimed to improve VM backup reliability, usability, and performance. For example, entire VMs can be recovered in a few clicks – there is no need to manually recreate a VM, install an OS, and then restore data.

“I performed a test recovery for a VM and noticed that not only everything worked smoothly, but also the recovery was quite fast. In a real DR situation, this feature would save days,” says Griesa.

Backup & Replication provides storage space reduction with data deduplication. This feature is available out of the box, enabled by default, and does not require any setup or configuration.

“Global data deduplication feature is a must have for us. It saves us real money on a daily basis. Not only were we able to reduce storage space, but we also saved money on maintenance, electricity, and cooling,” says Griesa.

The screenshot verification feature provides an automated way to verify VMware VM backups and sends screenshots of the restored VMs as a proof of recoverability.

“Without a doubt, screenshot verification is a cool feature. You can hold back a history of successful and working VM backups. The feature is a time saver,” says Griesa. “I see that my VM backups are successful and I can recover files from them, so basically, I do not have to spend time on backup administration and maintenance,” says Rene.

Backup & Replication has impressed FEhS with its usability, flexibility, and features. Griesa is also satisfied with the fast and professional level of support that he receives.

“Nakivo Backup & Replication is a powerful software. From the really clear web interface, to the fast and helpful support,” says Griesa. “Nakivo Backup & Replication solved the problems with our deduplicated volumes on the main data server. Now we have a working, fast, and affordable backup solution for all our demands. I can confidently say that we trust Nakivo Backup & Replication!“

With Backup & Replication, FEhS reduced backup administration time and storage space.

“With Nakivo, we saved more than 50% on backup administration. I no longer spend my evenings and weekends on VM backups maintenance. In addition, we reduced our storage space by approximately 30%,” says Griesa. “We are happy that we chose Nakivo Backup & Replication because now we have time to spend on our other IT administration tasks.“