SRAM in Chicago, IL, Choose Nakivo Backup & Replication to Backup VMware VMs

Nakivo, Inc. enables a bicycle component manufacturer to recover files 5X faster.

SRAM LLC, a manufacturer of bicycle components headquartered in Chicago, IL, is using Nakivo Backup & Replication to backup VMware VMs and recover entire VMs, files, and folders near-instantly.

Business challenge
Founded in Chicago, IL, in 1987, SRAM has grown to be the world’s second-largest bicycle component manufacturer. SRAM’s mission is a component manufacturer in the bike industry. Over the years, this company has increased sales exponentially and added other companies to its portfolio including Sachs, RockShox, Avid, Truvativ, and Zipp. SRAM designs and manufacturers shifters, chains, brakes, pedals, power meters, and other cycling components.

Headquartered in Chicago, SRAM has over 17 locations worldwide that include manufacturing facilities and smaller support clubs. SRAM’s IT infrastructure is 100% virtualized and comprises 40 ESXi hosts. VMware VMs store all the company’s information, including all business-critical application servers, email systems, databases, networking, and monitoring services. For this company, data protection is important; it recognize that no one can be completely safe from natural disasters, power outages, viruses, or human error, like accidental data deletions. All these issues could negatively impact daily operations at SRAM by affecting stakeholders like employees, customers and distributors. By using a VM backup solution that will restore their data as fast as possible, the company can minimize downtime and eliminate data loss. Overall, 24/7 data availability is the goal of the company.

“In the past, we used a backup software product where agents were installed on the OS, and we were backing up to tapes every night as well. Backup to tape was our only solution if we wanted to have external storage. Since there was no cloud 20-15 years ago, we had to use tapes because we needed external storage. Then, the backup software that required agents became cumbersome to use and did not offer complete functionality. We decided to look for a comprehensive VM backup solution because we wanted not only to backup VMware VMs, but also to be able to restore files and entire VMs. With VM recovery, we wanted to eliminate the need to rebuild the whole VM from scratch, so that we could shorten the process and save time,” says Michael Noeth, head, IT operations, SRAM.

Solution
While looking at different VM backup solutions available on the market, SRAM discovered Backup & Replication, and after three months of testing and evaluation, it was purchased to protect their virtual environment. The software was deployed as a VMware virtual appliance, decreasing installation time and reducing complexity.

“We had a great first experience installing and configuring the product, as everything is self-explanatory and easy to understand. Within half an hour, we managed to run our first backup job. With the pre-configured virtual appliance, there is also no need to maintain and license an underlying OS, and that is extremely advantageous for us,” says Noeth.

For SRAM, VM backup is the most essential feature for protecting their applications and databases. With forever-incremental backup, the company only transfers changed data to the backup repository, which results in improved performance and faster backups.

“We run forever-incremental backups every night for a major part of our VMware VMs. On average, backup jobs take from a few minutes to less than an hour maximum, depending on the type of a VM and what is stored inside it,” says Noeth.

With Backup & Replication, SRAM also receives complete automatic reports once a day about successful job completion.

“Automated reporting is fast and you get an indication of whether the backup was successful – and if it was not successful, then the report provides the details on what went wrong and how to fix it, so it is absolutely helpful,” he says.

Backup copy allows SRAM to create and maintain copies of VMware backups in different locations.

“Currently, we copy backups from location to location, but keep them internally, in-house. If something were to happen in one location, we would always have extra backup copies at other locations. Backup copy jobs provide a powerful way to protect our backups and ensure that they are safe, no matter what happens to our primary backups,” he says.

Instant VM recovery and instant file recovery provide SRAM with the options to recover entire VMs, files, and folders. “Instant file recovery is extremely fast, as within two to three minutes we are able to recover our files. Previously, with tapes, it took forever to recover files, and with our previous backup software, the process was more complicated and slower in general – it would usually take us at least 15 minutes,” he says.

With instant VM recovery, SRAM also can recover entire VMs from their backups near-instantly.

Results
Backup & Replication deployed as a pre-configured virtual appliance provides SRAM with fast VM backup and instant VM and file recovery. With forever-incremental backup, the company can complete VM backups within a few minutes to an hour. Moreover SRAM can recover VMs, files, and folders near-instantly. Overall, the company can recover files 5X faster.

“Nakivo Backup & Replication is an easy-to-use product, and since we have at least twenty staff worldwide who are working on backups, the fact that no special training was required to operate the software is awesome. As we are still transitioning away from tapes, Nakivo Backup & Replication has proved itself to us with its functionality, ease of use, and reasonable price structure,” says Noeth.