NAKIVO Helps Municipality of Calahorra Scale Up Its IT Environment
Business Challenge
Municipality of Calahorra is the town council of Calahorra, which is located in La Rioja, Spain. With some 24,000 residents in the town, the municipality manages all the information of its residents and oversees the economic and administrative issues of the public institutions of Calahorra. Two years ago, the council virtualized all its IT systems on VMware vSphere.
The council’s IT infrastructure consists of several VMware vSphere VMs. Since the Municipality of Calahorra is a public institution, the virtual machines store a variety of data, including all the economic and administrative information that relates to the local government and its paperwork. Moreover, all the resident’s data is also virtualized.
The council keeps multiple applications that manage and sort all the administrative information. Residents’ private data needs to be regularly backed up and quickly recovered in case of any issues. Since all the information belongs either to the government or to the residents of the town, data loss and downtime can be extremely disruptive to the daily operations of the council and might hinder the work of public workers. Historical information will be hard to collect again if the council loses it, that is why a reliable VM backup solution was needed for the council to keep its data always protected.
Two years ago, the Municipality of Calahorra selected NAKIVO Backup & Replication as its new VM backup solution. Recently, the council decided to expand its IT systems, so new hardware was purchased and data storage capacity was increased. Due to this expansion, the municipality decided to purchase additional NAKIVO Backup & Replication licenses that would cover new equipment and provide larger storage space capacity. “We were extremely satisfied with the performance of NAKIVO Backup & Replication for the past couple years. That is why the decision to scale up our environment and choose NAKIVO Backup & Replication again was a breeze,” says Diego de la Cámara Pérez, Head of Technical Department at Municipality of Calahorra.
Solution
Municipality of Calahorra chose NAKIVO Backup & Replication for its expansion project because the council was already satisfied with the performance and functionality of the product, so the council just purchased additional licenses and did not look for a substitute solution. The council also decided to install NAKIVO Backup & Replication on a Synology NAS (RS816). “The main benefit of combining NAKIVO Backup & Replication and our Synology NAS server is that you can combine all components under one roof: backup hardware, backup software and backup storage. Besides, a unified appliance is super-fast and easy to manage. While the web interface of the software is thoroughly designed, and has many useful options when it comes to the whole backup management,” says Diego.
The council performs VM backup once a week. The initial full backup took some time, since all the data had to be backed up. However, with the forever incremental backup only the changed data is transferred on subsequent jobs, which speeds up the VM backup process. With backup copy functionality, the council can have an extra copy of backups and store them at multiple locations. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows us to create copies of our VMware VM backups easily and automatically. We set up policies, and the software monitors our environment for new backups that fit the requirements of that policy. We no longer need to copy backups manually, the software handles everything for us and that is great,” says Diego.
For the Municipality of Calahorra, Active Directory integration was also a vital functionality. With Active Directory integration, the council can provide admin and guest access to NAKIVO Backup & Replication, so that various users can log in to NAKIVO Backup & Replication with their own credentials. “Active Directory integration is important for us, as multiple users have to manage our information system,” says Diego.
“We see three main benefits in NAKIVO Backup & Replication so far. First, with Synology NAS integration, we combined hardware, software and storage together. Secondly, the web interface is intuitive and easy-to-use and saves us time when it comes to backup management. Finally, the fact that backup copies can be done automatically, without interrupting the working hours of the council and without doing the whole process ‘by hand’, worked extremely well for us. Furthermore, we saved a lot of time when recovering a VM with NAKIVO Backup & Replication,” says Diego.
Results
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Municipality of Calahorra scaled up their IT environment and to cover larger storage space requirements and new hardware integration. The council can now schedule VM backup and backup copy jobs, as well as recover VMs, if necessary. Active Directory integration also provides the council with ability to provide access to NAKIVO Backup & Replication for multiple users. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication helped our institution save time when it comes to running VM backups, as well as when it comes to managing VM backups. Whenever we needed to recover a VM, the process has also been fast and easy. NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows our institution to continue servicing Calahorra’s residents by providing administrative services and protecting their private data with success,” says Diego.
About Municipality of Calahorra
Municipality of Calahorra is the town council of Calahorra. The town is located in the region of La Rioja Baja and has over 24,000 residents. The town’s economy relies on the agricultural industry, as well as packaging industry, shoe making and other sectors. Tourism, which developed through rural activities and spa services, is also important to Calahorra. The council oversees all the data of its residents, as well as manages all the administrative issues in the town. For more information, visit calahorra.es.