KPN Switches to NAKIVO and Saves One Hour Every Day
Business Challenge
KPN started as a public telecommunications company with headquarters in Rotterdam, Netherlands. KPN is a telecommunication and ICT service provider that offers telephone, mobile telephone, internet and television services to the consumer market. KPN has millions of users and its revenue reached 5.5B EUR in 2019. For the corporate market, KPN offers complete telecommunication and ICT solutions. In addition, KPN offers wholesale network services for other operators around the world.
KPN’s Managed Networking IT infrastructure consists of three sites with 15 physical servers and 100 virtual machines. Information stored in the virtual machines is mainly data and applications for network management. It includes Microsoft SQL databases, applications for network tooling, security tooling, database tooling and authentication tooling. KPN’s Managed Networking department is responsible for the corporate market. It manages the networks of KPN’s top 100 corporate customers. The department’s main priority is to ensure that all the tooling applications are up and running successfully on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, the ability to recover a complete VM near instantly if a server crashes is crucial for the department. Ensuring continuous availability of services for the top corporate customers is of utmost importance for KPN.
Until a few years ago, KPN Managed Networking only had physical servers and used tape backup software. The company was backing up its data from the physical servers to tape cartridges. One of the main disadvantages of backup to tape is that backup and recovery operations are extremely time-consuming. Moreover, backup to tape proved to be a more expensive option than it first appeared. Tape cartridges must be purchased regularly, not to mention the ongoing costs associated with software management.
When KPN Managed Networking decided to virtualize its physical servers, tape backup software became obsolete as it did not include the functionality of backing up virtual machines. KPN Managed Networking also changed how it stores its data, moving it from tape to storage servers.
Solution
When KPN Managed Networking was transitioning from physical servers to virtual machines, the need arose for a VM backup solution that was designed for virtualized environments. NAKIVO Backup & Replication was recommended to KPN by Pieter Simhoffer, a Technical Administrator at KPN Managed Networking department. Pieter was already using NAKIVO Backup & Replication in his home lab for backing up VMs. Being familiar with the software, Pieter knew that the software offered all the functionality the company needed at an attractive price. NAKIVO Backup & Replication was cost-effective with a comprehensive set of features that includes VM backup, VM replication, VM recovery, backup copy, backup to cloud and even native backup to tape.
“It was easy to install and configure NAKIVO Backup & Replication, especially with the straightforward support guide. The website is also easy to navigate and keeps improving with every new product version,” says Pieter. “With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we have a stable environment, even though we only take advantage of the product’s core functionality and do not use its fullest potential. What KPN needs is scheduled backups that finish successfully and occasional VM restores.”
With the VM backup functionality of NAKIVO Backup & Replication, KPN can perform an initial full VM backup and subsequent incremental backups. Currently, the company backs up its VMs to Dell storage servers.
“We schedule backup jobs on a daily and weekly basis. Understandably, an initial full backup always takes a long time to complete, but our daily 55 incremental backups take approximately 5 hours. This is obviously much faster than backing up to tape. In addition, global data deduplication saves us a ton of storage space, plus time spent on backing up VMs as well,” says Pieter.
Finally, NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows KPN Managed Networking to recover entire VMs, as well as files, when needed. Instant VM Recovery boots VMs directly from compressed and deduplicated backups, so that it can recover VMs in a matter of minutes. “Instant VM recovery helps us save time because we can recover a complete VM. We’ve only used the Instant File Recovery feature once, but it saved hours for a user when we had to use it,” says Pieter.
Results
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, KPN Managed Networking now has reliable data protection with flexible functionality and saves resources. Incremental VM backup allows KPN to complete 55 backup jobs daily in just 5 hours. The global data deduplication saves the company storage space. While with instant VM recovery, KPN Managed Networking can easily recover complete VMs from compressed and deduplicated backups.
“After switching to NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we are finally able to back up our VMs reliably with improved backup speed. We no longer need to change tapes; thus, we’ve freed up at least an hour every day with NAKIVO Backup & Replication,” says Pieter.
About KPN
KPN is a Dutch landline and mobile telecommunications company based in Rotterdam, Netherlands. KPN serves consumer markets with networks for telephony, broadband and television, as well as business markets with complete telecommunication and IT solutions. As a market leader in the Netherlands, KPN is committed to millions of private and business customers. From mobile subscribers to household who purchase an all-in-1 package with internet and interactive TV and business customers with IT services and workplaces. Worldwide, KPN offers wholesale network services to other operators. KPN has 105 stores and 16 business centers cross the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.kpn.com.