NAKIVO Increases VM Backup Speed By 4X for a Swiss IT Services Company

Business Challenge

ITConcepts is among the leading BSM (Business Service Management) integrators in Switzerland, Germany, and the Asia-Pacific region. As a specialized IT company dealing in Business Service Management solutions, ITConcepts automates IT business processes and enables the availability of resources. The company offers advice, planning, and technological solutions that are tailored to the specific needs of their customers.

ITConcept’s IT infrastructure consists of two sites: their primary office location and a datacenter. A total of 40 VMware VMs store a variety of critical servers, including domain controllers, file servers, ERP systems, ITSM servers, and other information. Since their customer’s data is stored in these critical systems, the loss of that data might be catastrophic for the company and their reputation. It is for this reason that ITConcepts requires a robust VM backup solution for the backup and replication of their VMs.

“We used another VM backup product in the past, however, that software was not ideal for our needs and needed extra maintenance hours. For our relatively small virtual environment, the product was just too resource intensive. Furthermore, we wanted to copy VM backups offsite and that product did not have such functionality, thus we had to rely on 3rd-party tools to achieve that. Overall, we had to pay for multiple products to have all the required functionality, but ideally, we wanted to have everything under one roof. We wanted to find a VM backup solution that could provide us with VM backup, backup copy, and ease of management,” says Fabian Klausner, IT Administrator at ITConcepts Professional GmbH.

Solution

“We decided to select NAKIVO Backup & Replication as our new VM backup solution because the product offered us the best price/performance ratio for the core features that we needed. Moreover, NAKIVO Backup & Replication’s web user interface is extremely intuitive, thus provides us with ease of access and management. What is interesting is that my colleagues are able to operate the software without any special training,” says Fabian. NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers a variety of installation options, including Windows or Linux installation, VMware appliance installation, and installation on a NAS. “Regardless of the installation option chosen, the whole setup process is super easy and can be done in a short amount of time. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, the deployment time is at its minimum, as all required components are built-in,” adds Fabian.

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, ITConcepts can now run VM backup jobs and backup copy jobs under one product. NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers native, agentless, and image-based backup of VMware VMs; additionally, the product can copy VM backups offsite for extra reliability. “With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we can use different schedules, depending on our data that is stored in the VMs. Basically, we back up VMs once a day, once a week, and once a month. The average forever-incremental backup job finishes in about 12 minutes. Which is awesome because the VM backup speed is at least 4X faster than our previous backup product,” explains Fabian.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication’s network acceleration feature speeds up VM backup jobs and shortens backup windows at the same time. “With network acceleration, our VM backup jobs are running much faster because the amount of data that gets transferred over the network is reduced. This feature provides us with the opportunity to execute backup jobs in short intervals, thus we see a 4X speed improvement,” says Fabian.

“Since our previous backup product was not able to run backup copy jobs out-of-the-box, we had to rely on 3-rd party tools. Now, NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows us to create and store backup copies in our secondary location. If the worst-case scenario comes true, and we lose our backups, we would have a second copy of our backups in our secondary location, thus we can recover those VMs without much pain. Ultimately, backup copy functionality saved us a bunch of time on setup and maintenance,” reports Fabian.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides ITConcepts with fast VM backup, network acceleration functionality, and backup copy within one product. The company can now complete backup jobs 4X faster with network acceleration in comparison to their previous backup product. In addition, ITConcepts can store backup copies offsite to ensure recoverability, in case of a disaster. Lastly, with an intuitive web user interface, the company saved time on deployment and improved manageability. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a stable and reliable VM backup solution that can back up our VMs out-of-the-box. We no longer need to spend money on any 3rd-party tools to have backup copy functionality, as NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows us to copy backups offsite without a problem. Our last solution, needed at least four hours of maintenance every two months, since that product’s integrity was not best. Now, with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we no longer need to spend our time on backup administration and maintenance,” says Fabian.

About ITConcepts Professional GmbH

ITConcepts is one of the leading providers of 360° solutions for the efficient automation of business processes. Founded in 1999, ITConcepts has over 120 employees in Europe and 50 in Switzerland. Their long-standing expertise consists of identity and access management, IT security, IT service management, workload automation, and big data analytics. Their software concepts are custom-tailored to individual needs and focus on the optimization of the IT operations in a business environment. ITConcepts is the first Swiss address for all the questions concerning efficient and resource-friendly business service integrations. For more information, please visit www.itconcepts.ch.