NAKIVO Helps Cheese Distribution Company Reduce VM Recovery Time from 12 Hours to 10 Minutes

Business Challenge

In 2011, Bradburys decided to look at how they could reduce the cost of IT within their business without sacrificing any reliability. After a comprehensive study, the company decided to turn to VMware. Now Bradburys has two ESXi 5.1 hosts in production at their main site, each running on HP DL380 with twin-quad core processors and 64 GB of RAM, connected through fiber channel to an HP MSA with 16 TBs of RAID storage. The hardware powers 36 VMs: 19 Windows and Linux servers and 17 virtual desktops, and serves 149 users across three sites in Buxton Derbyshire and one site in Nottinghamshire. The company has virtualized all their critical servers including Oracle database, Microsoft Exchange 2010, SQL and Red Hat Enterprise servers. "After the project was complete we realized that whilst we were backing up using our legacy solution we did not have any software in place that would replicate the critical production servers across to our DR site," said Greg Buccheri, IT Manager at Bradburys. "As our systems are quite diverse, it became apparent that any disaster would mean at least 12 hours of downtime." This was not acceptable and a solution had to be found quickly. "We knew that whatever software we used needed to be application aware as our systems include both Microsoft and Oracle databases," added Greg. "Also we have Exchange 2010 and Red Hat Enterprise in the enterprise, so these all had to be covered as well."

Solution

"We looked at and tried many different solutions searching for one that would not only cover our needs but that would also give us a good ROI," said Greg. The IT team at Bradburys soon came across NAKIVO Backup & Replication and wondered if the product would provide the type of protection they needed.

"We were very surprised at how easy it was to both set-up and use the product, the GUI is intuitive and laid out in a proficient and logical way," added Greg. "And we were all delighted that NAKIVO Backup & Replication achieved our disaster recovery goals and cut our recovery time from hours to minutes. This, coupled with the software's ability to perform VM backups and restores to an earlier point in time makes this product a winner."

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is built specifically for VMware vSphere environments by unifying VM backup and replication in a single solution to provide fast, reliable, and efficient recovery of VMs including applications and data.

"We evaluated other leading VM backup and disaster recovery solutions but selected NAKIVO Backup & Replication for its ability to deliver a 2X to 8X greater ROI versus other available offerings. The unique combination of price, performance, and time-saving functionality made NAKIVO Backup & Replication the clear winner for protecting our business-critical applications and services," added Greg.

Results

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Bradburys has reduced projected disaster downtime from 12 hours to just 10 minutes. Bradburys now also utilizes NAKIVO Backup & Replication as their single solution for backing up, replicating, and protecting their virtualized infrastructure. Bradburys has reduced their recovery time objective (RTO) by 99% while also reaching a new lower recovery point objective (RPO) of just one minute to better support their business critical VMware environment of Microsoft and Oracle applications.

Company Profile

Since 1884, Bradburys sources and distributes an unrivaled range of superior cheeses from the UK and Europe. Over the years, Bradburys has won numerous international and local awards for the cheeses that they supply globally, including the industry-recognized Nantwich Gold award for the last 3 years running. The company works with many specialized cheese producers to provide a cost effective route to the market. Bradburys focuses on marketing, accreditations, packaging, and labeling in order to supply its desirable products to the major UK and international supermarket chains and select independent customers.

Bradburys has been successful for over 120 years and has grown annual revenue to £90 million. By working hard to understand customer needs and trends Bradburys has quickly responded to fast-changing market conditions with innovative product choices. While maintaining the best of its knowledge and traditions, Bradburys has developed into a modern, forward-thinking business with its main focus surrounding customer satisfaction. For more information, visit bradburyscheese.co.uk.