NAKIVO Enables SRAM to Recover Files 5X Faster

Business Challenge

Founded in Chicago in 1987, SRAM, LLC has grown to be the world’s second-largest bicycle component manufacturer. SRAM’s mission is to be the most exciting component manufacturer in the bike industry. Over the years, SRAM 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, USA, 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 SRAM, data protection is of the utmost importance; they 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 solid VM backup solution that will restore their data as fast as possible, SRAM can minimize downtime and eliminate data loss. Overall, 24/7 data availability is the ultimate goal of the company.

“In the past, we used a backup software product where agents were installed on the operating system, 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 back up 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 virtual machine from scratch, so that we could shorten the process and save time,” says Michael Noeth, Head of IT Operations at SRAM.

Solution

While looking at different VM backup solutions available on the market, SRAM discovered NAKIVO Backup & Replication, and after three months of testing and evaluation, NAKIVO Backup & Replication was purchased to protect their virtual environment. NAKIVO Backup & Replication was deployed as a VMware virtual appliance, significantly 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 operating system, and that is extremely advantageous for us,” says Michael.

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 virtual machine and what is stored inside it,” says Michael.

With NAKIVO 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,” says Michael.

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,” says Michael.

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

Results

NAKIVO 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, with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, SRAM can now recover entire VMs, files, and folders near-instantly. Overall, the company can now recover files 5X faster. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication is an easy-to-use product, and since we have at least 20 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 Michael.

About SRAM

Founded in 1987, SRAM, LLC is a privately-owned bicycle component manufacturer based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. SRAM designs and manufactures bicycle components, including shifters, derailleurs, brakes, chains, pedals, power meters, and other cycling parts. SRAM’s components are used by bicycle manufacturers and sold in the aftermarket to distributors and to high-end bicycle retailers. The company grew organically and through acquisitions, and by the end of the 00s had become one of the largest high-end cycling component brands in the world, selling under the brands SRAM, Avid, and RockShox, among others. For more information, please visit www.sram.com.