NAKIVO Helps Miralix Obtain Ease-of-Use and Management

Business Challenge

Miralix is a Danish software company that was established in 1996. The company provides telephone-based customer service solutions to businesses, government organizations, and other organizations. The company first sold telephone systems, but as technology evolved, Miralix became one of the most popular communications companies in the Danish market with hundreds of companies, using their ContactCenter and switchboard software. Miralix’s IT infrastructure consists of two separate sites, with a total of six physical servers and 63 Hyper-V VMs. One site is dedicated to hosting Miralix’s Unified ContactCenter customers with a separate infrastructure, while the other site is used by all the company’s employees.

Miralix’s Hyper-V VMs store the company’s critical data and applications that fulfill a wide variety of functions. The company hosts unified ContactCenter solutions for many customers, which makes VM backup and recovery necessary in case customers accidentally delete data that will have to be recovered by Miralix. If critical data suddenly becomes unavailable, the impact could range from small service disruptions to customers being unable to send and receive corporate calls. Furthermore, VM backup and recovery are crucially important and are a requirement for Miralix’s ISAE3000 certification.

Miralix previously used different backup software to back up their data to the cloud. The old backup software was difficult to implement and maintain, and no new functionality was implemented for years. “The process of investigating what caused failed jobs was tedious and difficult. The local server interface was JAVA-based and the web-based central management was not very intuitive. The product was not integrated with Hyper-V and required installation on each VM. Data had to be downloaded from the cloud because the solution did not offer a local, on-premise copy replicated to the cloud. Overall, we just wanted to switch to a newer, easier to use, and feature-rich solution,” says Frank Lundemo, Technology Consultant at Miralix.

Solution

Ultimately, Miralix selected NAKIVO Backup & Replication as their preferred VM backup solution for protecting their Hyper-V environment. The company ended up choosing NAKIVO Backup & Replication because the software is highly intuitive and good value for money. During the testing and evaluation period, Miralix’s team was satisfied with the support and documentation from NAKIVO’s team that was provided to them. Moreover, the fact that NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be installed on a Synology NAS sealed the deal for Miralix. Lastly, the user-friendly web interface and calendar view were nice additions that the competition did not offer.

“Installing NAKIVO Backup & Replication is easy and fast. Updating to newer versions has also been very easy and has worked without errors. The configuration is easy and flexible both when it comes to backing up servers and when creating recovery jobs and monitoring them using the web interface and the reports. The web interface is simple and to the point. The front page usually gives the administrator the necessary information,” explains Frank.

The IT team at Miralix particularly enjoys NAKIVO Backup & Replication’s integration with Synology NAS devices, as each of Miralix’s sites has a Synology NAS. “Synology NAS devices are very powerful and easy-to-use. Running NAKIVO Backup & Replication on a Synology NAS with a bunch of disks seemed like an obvious choice. One site connects to a Hyper-V cluster with three physical hosts and runs a daily backup to the local NAS. The second site connects to three stand-alone Hyper-V hosts and runs a daily backup to the local NAS. VM replication might also be implemented later this year,” says Frank.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication brings Miralix great results with VM backup functionality and space savings with global data deduplication. “The feature of automatically adding a server or a disk to the job is nice because it saves time and helps us avoid forgetting to add a disk or a server to the backup routine. Global data deduplication functionality provides us with approximately 87% space savings. This means that we save money that would otherwise have been spent on disks drives,” says Frank.

Instant file and object recovery provide additional benefits and time savings to Miralix. “Users might delete a simple file occasionally, but fortunately not too often. Users can sometimes wait hours for a file to be restored because that file is not critical. NAKIVO Backup & Replication’s instant file recovery works well and is especially convenient when allowing the recovered file to be sent by email. We specify the user’s email address and the user then receives the recovered file and chooses what to do with it. This saves our IT department significant amounts of time,” Frank notes.

Finally, Active Directory integration saves additional time for Miralix’s IT team. “Our GDPR/ISAE 3000 implementation requires technicians who access the web interface to use personal logins, and Active Directory integration can save time for our technicians,” explains Frank.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication installed on a Synology NAS provides Miralix with improved VM backup functionality, the ability to recover files and objects instantly, Active Directory integration, and time and storage space savings due to global data deduplication and intuitive web interface. “The simplicity of the web interface is probably the strongest selling point. Ease of installation, configuration, and use solved our biggest problem with the previous solution, which was difficult to configure and manage. The Hyper-V full recovery function is the main reason we bought the NAKIVO Backup & Replication as well. Simplicity sometimes results in time savings, as is the case for us. NAKIVO Backup & Replication helped us in several ways; first and foremost, by delivering a product that all our IT staff feels comfortable working with. NAKIVO Backup & Replication has a simple overview and a web interface that 90% of the time gives the IT staff the information they need without navigating deeper into the product’s configuration. Backup copy functionality provided by NAKIVO Backup & Replication is also great and is something we are planning to implement in the near future,” says Frank.

About Miralix

Miralix is a Danish company that specializes in developing IT Mobility applications for Microsoft Lync, Mobile network, and SIP/IP enabled PBX´. The company’s focus is offering highly integrated and user-friendly applications that enhance teamwork and customer satisfaction through availability, flexibility, and presence (mobile, calendar, pc). Miralix´ IT Mobility solutions make it possible to work whenever - wherever! Supporting virtual servers i.e. Hyper-V or Citrix, the Miralix applications can be fully implemented in IT environments to reduce the costs of HW servers. Automatic synchronization programs enhance processes and minimize failure by manual updates. The AAA credit rating from Soliditet guarantees future development and support of applications that meet the expectations of Miralix’s customers. For more information, please visit miralix.com.