NAKIVO Cuts VM Backup Costs by 2X for a Biopharmaceutical Company
Business Challenge
Launched in 2012 by Third Rock Ventures, MyoKardia was founded by world-class experts in cardiovascular disease, cardiac muscle biology, and genetics. MyoKardia is pioneering a precision medicine approach to discover, develop, and commercialize targeted therapies for the treatment of serious and neglected rare cardiovascular diseases. The overall goal is to be the world’s leading precision cardiovascular medicine company.
The entire IT infrastructure at MyoKardia is virtualized and consists of approximately 30 servers. “Since we are a healthcare research company, a lot of research is done at our premises, including various experiments that scientists are running, that is why we need to keep our laboratory results, as well as file servers safe and secure. Moreover, we have a few in-house applications, like a couple of science databases, four Oracle databases, and other medical applications. In terms of data protection, our production servers and file servers are the core of our organization and they need to be backed up and restored in the minimal amount of time,” says Samuel Riley, IT Manager at MyoKardia.
The previous VM backup solution at MyoKardia was just too expensive and complicated. “We only needed to use the core functionality of the software and the previous backup solution offered too many things that were not necessary for our organization and the product was just too complicated and expensive to maintain. In addition, the solution was pretty resource intensive and required people to keep all the different components of the product running at all times,” says Samuel.
When MyoKardia decided to look for an alternative VM backup solution, there were certain criteria to be met. “We wanted basically an insurance policy and a tool that would help us easily backup data offsite, in case of a site failure. Of course, we had a certain budget in mind, but also, we wanted a solution that had direct connection capability to some cloud providers, granular recovery capabilities, and a professional support, to make sure we will get help when we need it,” says Samuel.
Solution
During the evaluation stage, MyoKardia did a proof of concept with three different VM backup solutions and NAKIVO Backup & Replication turned out to be the most cost effective and resource efficient for the organization. “Our infrastructure manager performed the initial configuration of NAKIVO Backup & Replication and I was surprised that he was able to finish the process within a day. His feedback was that the product was the easiest in terms of product management and VM backup administration,” says Samuel.
“NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides different installation options and a user interface that is intuitive and not hard to ramp up. In addition, I had little experience with such types of products, so it is great to be able to understand and use the software without spending hours on training,” says Samuel.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is installed on Windows and VM backups are performed on a daily basis at MyoKardia. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication integrates seamlessly with vSphere and the time the product takes to complete full and incremental VM backups meets our expectations. We are really happy with NAKIVO Backup & Replication because the product minimized the time for us to learn and get used to operating and managing VM backups. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we cut the VM backup administration time by a third,” says Samuel.
“Currently, we are preparing for significant changes in our environment because we will be moving buildings and we will require high performance from NAKIVO Backup & Replication, in order to accomplish this move. It might be interesting to check out the Synology NAS installation to get even higher performance because backups of file servers, which are approximately 8 TB, complete in significantly less amount of time than with the previous backup solution, but it will always be cool to complete them even faster,” says Samuel.
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, MyoKardia also has the ability to perform instant VM and file recoveries. “We tested both instant VM recovery and instant file recovery several times, but have not used them in a production situation. We saw great results because VMs and files restored within minutes and the whole process was easy to administer. These features are mostly an insurance policy against serious failures, but having positive results is always good,” says Samuel.
Results
NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides MyoKardia with significant budget savings of 50% versus their previous VM backup solution. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Samuel and his team no longer spend significant time on trying to keep all the different components of a product running because VM backup administration time decreased by approximately 35%. “Our previous VM backup solution was pretty resource intensive, but with NAKIVO Backup & Replication every hour that we save on VM backup administration can be translated into cost savings. NAKIVO Backup & Replication is resource efficient in terms of installation and configuration, but also in terms of performance and management. NAKIVO Backup & Replication is just what we needed,” says Samuel.
Company Profile
MyoKardia is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering a precision medicine approach to discover, develop, and commercialize targeted therapies for the treatment of serious and neglected rare cardiovascular diseases. The initial focus is the treatment of heritable cardiomyopathies, a group of genetically-driven forms of heart failure that result from biomechanical defects in cardiac muscle contraction. MyoKardia has used its precision medicine platform to generate a pipeline of therapeutic programs for the chronic treatment of the two most prevalent forms of heritable cardiomyopathy-hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, and dilated cardiomyopathy, or DCM. MyoKardia’s mission is to change the world for patients with serious cardiovascular disease through bold and innovative science.