NAKIVO Helps a Research Center Save Time on Backup Administration
Business Challenge
The Microwave Applications Group (GAM) focuses its research on developing techniques for analyzing and designing passive microwave and millimeter wave components such as filters, matching networks, multiplexers, switches, probes, and transitions. The group belongs to the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM) of the Technical University of Valencia (UPV) and is located in the Polytechnic City of Innovation, the scientific park of the UPV.
The group currently has eight physical servers and several virtual machines for storing the critical data and applications of the research group. Virtual machines store confidential data related to the educational material that the group teaches within their department, and all the research carried out by the group. Data loss could be detrimental to the group, as all research activity would practically stop. “For example, if the VM that runs the license servers stops working, we can no longer use the essential SW to carry out our work. VM Backup and VM replication are essential for GAM, as we need to guarantee the integrity of data and have multiple recovery points,” says José Vicente Morro Ros, Associate Professor at GAM.
In the past, GAM mirrored data to several disks installed in their physical facilities at iTEAM. In addition, GAM backed up every day to a NAS to ensure the possibility of data recovery in case of a critical failure. Backup procedures at that time were carried out manually by the department’s employees, which made this task cumbersome and inefficient. In addition, since the backup process was not automated, everything was susceptible to failures that had to be reviewed and fixed manually before the next daily backup. The backup copies were also created manually and by different department employees, causing a great loss of time in teaching and research responsibilities. Moreover, these procedures used to be subject to failures that had to be solved as a matter of priority, which caused the repetition of long backup processes that always ended up being incomplete. To replace this process, GAM selected NAKIVO Backup & Replication for automated Hyper-V VM backup and replication.
Solution
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a fast, reliable, and flexible data protection solution for virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS environments. “We were looking for an automatic VM backup and replication solution, so firstly, we purchased a QNAP NAS and saw that NAKIVO Backup & Replication was included in the QNAP store. Then, we decided to take a chance and test NAKIVO Backup & Replication. After a short trial period, the product had practically convinced us to deploy it as our permanent backup solution,” says José.
Currently, NAKIVO Backup & Replication is installed on the QNAP NAS purchased for the department. “The integration with the hardware is totally making the whole installation process very easy. We were ready to start running our first backup job in less than one hour. The whole process was simple and straightforward. Moreover, the web interface is intuitive and complete with many configuration options,” says José.
GAM backs up their entire IT infrastructure in under eight hours with NAKIVO Backup & Replication. “In order to ensure the correct and secure preservation of our data, we perform a VM backup every day outside working hours. Moreover, backup copy and VM replication saved us time previously spent on backup administration. Now, we can easily back up every VM without manual labor and replicate each VM easily to a secondary site. Neither option was possible with our previous approach,” says José.
José also praises the quality of NAKIVO’s technical support. “NAKIVO’s technical support is super-fast. I have asked several questions and had the solution to my problems in less than an hour. For this reason, I consider that the support provided is perfect,” says José.
Results
“For us, NAKIVO Backup & Replication has two main advantages. Firstly, the software is extremely fast and easy-to-use. Secondly, we do not have to worry about failed backups because NAKIVO Backup & Replication is reliable, and we do not need to make manual procedures that waste our time. In the past, we had to manually check every backup copy and replica we made of the data and virtual machines. However, now with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, there’s no more manual, repetitive tasks, as the product gets the job done reliably,” says José.
About the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM)
The Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM) is a research center integrated into the Polytechnic City of Innovation, the new scientific park located at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. The Institute performs its research and development (R&D) activities in the field of the Information Society Technologies (IST) field. The iTEAM comprises eight research groups, gathering more than 100 researchers and covering five scientific areas related to the telecommunications engineering field. iTEAM also develops the R&D activities in the EPS Campus of Gandía, within its own researchers and laboratories. For more information, please visit www.iteam.upv.es.