Taiwan's Largest Organic Retail Chain Reduces RTO to 10 Minutes for SQL and Oracle VMs with NAKIVO

Business Challenge

Leezen is the largest organic retail chain in Taiwan with 97 stores and 11 overseas locations. Leezen’s philosophy of organic lifestyle came into fruition with the collaboration of 915 farmers at 230 farms, 380 vendors, thousands of employees, and 6 million devoted consumers. Leezen supplies more than 2,000 items, ranging from organic fruits and vegetables, food products, clothing made from organic cotton, selective household items, to audio books and supplies related to Buddhism. The company continues to develop new products adding over 100 items to its portfolio of organic food and goods each year.

Leezen's infrastructure consists of five ESXi hosts. "Our environment is a mix of Windows and Linux, with approximately 70-80 VMware VMs. Critical applications and data must be recovered instantly, including Microsoft SQL, Oracle DB, Oracle JDE, ordering system, and product audit system," says Jason Wan, Information Technology Technical Manager at Leezen.

With over 100 stores in Taiwan, USA, Canada, Singapore, China, and Hong Kong, Leezen must maintain 24/7 access to their applications and data. "We have established a large interconnected network of resellers, vendors, and customers who depend on our timely day-to-day operations. If there is a problem with our IT infrastructure, this would affect business continuity tremendously. That is why we must be able to restore our environment as quickly as possible," says Jason.

Previously, Leezen had a physical environment and protected it by installing agents on each protected machine and copying data to external hard drives. "Our approach was too old-fashioned, that is why we finally decided to virtualize our environment. We prepared a physical server in our datacenter and installed VMware vSphere. Next, we decided to find a backup solution that would give us a sense of stability and protection. We did not need a bunch of features. We needed a cost-effective and easy to use product that could quickly back up and instantly restore our VMware VMs," says Jason.

Solution

Leezen selected NAKIVO Backup & Replication to protect their VMware environment. "NAKIVO Backup & Replication installed effortlessly on Windows. The web interface is excellent and I could use a macOS to manage the software. It is an extremely easy to use solution that does not require installing any expensive agents," says Jason.

Leezen's main goal of purchasing a backup solution was to perform daily VM backups and be able to instantly recover full VMs. "One advantage of NAKIVO Backup & Replication is that the software supports backup of MS SQL and Oracle," says Jason. NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses VMware quiescing technology to create application-consistent VMware VM backups. "With automated backup verification, we know that our VM backups completed successfully and are recoverable," says Jason. NAKIVO Backup & Replication can automatically check VM backups to ensure that entire VMs, files, and objects can be recovered.

With the previous approach to data protection, Leezen usually wasted the whole day on trying to recover data. "Previously, we had to install an OS and all patches and only then could we recover applications and data. This whole process usually took the whole day. Nowadays, with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, the entire system can be recovered in less than 10 minutes with just one click of a button. Flash VM Boot is a great technology and gives peace of mind when some system failures arise. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, our network of resellers, vendors, and customers operates successfully without any interruptions," says Jason.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides reliable, easy to use, and flexible VM backup and recovery features to support Leezen's business. When Leezen deployed NAKIVO Backup & Replication, VM recovery speed improved dramatically. With Flash VM Boot, Leezen can recover full VMs in under 10 minutes. "With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, it is extremely easy to restore our environment with minimum resources and little effort involved. NAKIVO Backup & Replication helped us save management time by approximately 60% and achieve system wide data protection and fast data recovery," says Jason.

Company Profile

Leezen opened its first organic store in 1998 with the intent to restore harmony between mankind and nature, when organic farming was consistently dismissed by critiques for being unpractical. Leezen, being mindful of organic farmers’ hardships and need for assistance, procured all organic produce farmers were capable of growing and harvesting. Nowadays, Leezen has expanded to become the largest organic retail chain in Taiwan with 97 stores and 11 overseas locations in the United States, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. By 2013, Leezen has grown to $70 million in revenue as it aspires to "rejuvenate the mother earth and purify the mind". Leezen provides transparency in organic labeling according to the grade of materials used, promotes the use of materials that are eco-friendly, promotes the use of organic cotton, and assures the quality of raw materials, manufacturing process, and final products. The company operates and adheres to the principle of win-win and integrity, and has successfully earned the trust of farmers, vendors, and consumers alike. For more information, visit www.leezen.com.tw.