NAKIVO Saves One Day on Configuration for a Software Company

Business Challenge

AVIOBOOK, is a Thales Group company that supports airline operations as a partner. AVIOBOOK’s comprehensive software digitizes airline’s workflows, syncs information, and securely connects airline staff. Combined with the company’s cutting-edge hardware solution and thanks to its expertise in data and cyber security, AVIOBOOK helps airlines create more value and meet unique operational demands. The company also offers 24/7 support, training and documentation.

AVIOBOOK operates out of one site that has seven running physical servers. Virtual machines run mostly developer tools and data-gathering tools. Some of the machines are used for management, while others are used for testing purposes only. There are also virtual machines used for documentation portals. For AVIOBOOK, data is the bread and butter of the company. If the company loses data, they also lose hours of hard work by developers, potential revenue and even customer trust. Since AVIOBOOK promises their customers certain SLAs, such as bug fixes, extra functionality and frequent product updates, data loss and downtime cannot be tolerated. A reliable backup solution that protects the company’s data must be in place.

In the past, AVIOBOOK used a solution that relied on scripts to compress most critical databases and copied them to a NAS server. Previously, recovery was a manual and tedious job for the IT team. The solution was good enough for a small company with five people working in a one-room office. AVIOBOOK has grown tenfold since then, thus, the approach to data protection had to evolve as well. The company wanted an efficient backup solution that would protect both VMs and physical servers and offer fast recovery at the same time. The backup solution had to be affordable for a large number of VMs and just a handful of physical servers.

Solution

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is designed for virtualized environments and supports VMware, Hyper-V and Nutanix AHV environments, as well as offers Windows and Linux Server backup. Since AVIOBOOK’s previous approach to data protection did not allow the company to back up the entire environment, AVIOBOOK needed a scalable solution that was easier to maintain. Moreover, since NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports various NAS servers, including Synology, QNAP, ASUSTOR, FreeNAS and others, the decision to trust NAKIVO was easier to make.

AVIOBOOK installed NAKIVO Backup & Replication on a newly purchased Synology NAS server, and the installation was easy and straightforward, while the web-interface is self-explanatory. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication was the most affordable solution for us that we could implement in a short time span, also due to the solution’s integration with our Synology NAS. The product does not require much needed real estate on our ESXi’s and runs like a charm,” says Romeo, IT Administrator at AVIOBOOK.

Currently, AVIOBOOK takes advantage of both virtual and physical backup. The first initial backup took some time, but all current jobs are much shorter because the solution offers incremental backups. “We run a daily backup of our most critical data without any issues in the hours after midnight and before non-business hours. Everything runs smoothly with great performance results,” says Romeo.

“With the calendar and dashboard, we track the performance and progress of our backup jobs. I enjoy how you can see when the jobs are scheduled and really enjoy the fact that you get an estimate of how long the job will take to complete. I also appreciate that I can see how the backup job is running and the what is the estimated completion percentage is,” explains Romeo.

AVIOBOOK also values the ability to instantly recover an entire VM and maintain copies of backups in different locations, such as a public cloud. “With backup copy, we send backup copies to a cloud. This saves us time and offloads our production site. Instant VM recovery is fast and effective, we have tested in on a VM, and the functionality worked right out of the box. In the near future, we are planning to use Amazon EC2 storage for sending backups to the cloud. We are still deciding on the best option for us, as NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports different cloud environments,” says Romeo.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows AVIOBOOK to protect both the company’s physical and virtual environments and integrates seamlessly with the company’s Synology NAS server. With the dashboard and calendar, the company can schedule backup jobs at different times and track progress of those backup jobs. While previously, recovery was a manual and tedious job, now, NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers a near-instant way to recover an entire VM. AVIOBOOK already saved a whole day worth of work on installation and configuration, in comparison to setting up their previous solution. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication was a fit for us in terms of budget and capabilities. Other solutions that we investigated were too expensive or too difficult to use. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we easily track backup jobs with the calendar and can easily recover entire VMs now,” says Romeo.

About AVIOBOOK

AVIOBOOK, is a Thales Group company that supports airlines as a partner in their digital strategy. AVIOBOOK offers a comprehensive and highly integrated suite of ground and flight applications, systems and solutions that connect all stakeholders and key assets in a safe and secure manner. This, combined with expertise in data and cyber security, gives airlines an edge through greater efficiency and ultimately sustainable, profitable growth. For more information, visit www.aviobook.aero.