NAKIVO on NAS Increases VM Backup Speed by 50% for LRP Law Firm

Business Challenge

Founded in 1963, Lang, Richert, and Patch (LRP) is a medium sized law firm located in California's San Joaquin Valley. Individually and collectively, the firm has earned a solid reputation for effective advocacy. The practice is diverse, with national, state, and local clients, relying on the firm’s experience and success in case analysis and litigation, insolvency and bankruptcy, business ethics, transactions, and estate planning.

LRP law firm has a hybrid IT infrastructure, utilizing VMware ESXi hosts and traditional standalone servers, and is slowly transitioning into a fully virtualized environment. By being a law firm, there are certain issues in regards to what can the firm virtualize and what they cannot, in terms of data security and corporate compliance. Currently, the firm is mainly protecting their accounting system, document management system, records management system, and all the information regarding cases, including basic business litigation, corporation litigation, and construction law.

Achieving 24/7 availability of information is a top priority because the firm’s attorneys often work not only standard hours, but also can stay working through the night, so shutting down critical systems even during the night time is not an option. By being available 24/7, the firm has to protect not only the data that is created on a daily basis, but also the client’s data that is utilized for the cases. If such information would be lost, the firm can lose the case, which is why data redundancy protection is of the highest importance.

“We have been using another VM backup solution and Synology NAS servers to protect our VMware VMs. The product required a fair amount of IT administration time, in terms of setting up, monitoring, and maintaining the software, and had a significant resource overhead. Additional setups and manipulations were always needed. Moreover, I was not a fan of the notifications system that the software provided, so I wanted a product that would deliver clean reports about every backup job. I wanted to find a VM backup solution that would not only integrate with our Synology NAS servers, but also offer quick VM backup and instant file recovery,” says Darin L. Land, Director of Information Technology at LRP law firm.

Solution

Darin came across NAKIVO Backup & Replication on the Synology Package Center and installed the product on a DS1513+ NAS with 4GB RAM. Within a day, NAKIVO Backup & Replication was integrated with their infrastructure and Darin started to back up all VMware VMs in the test environment. Darin noticed the clean and efficient web user interface, the simplicity of setting up an organized and scheduled backup methodology, and the easiness of administrating recovery jobs. “I enjoy the fact that NAKIVO Backup & Replication not only runs on the Synology NAS, but also has the backup repository on the NAS itself. Since we have a couple of Synology NAS servers that sort of mirror each other, we now have everything in one platform, and also a copy going to a FreeBSD ZFS repository,” says Darin.

By installing NAKIVO Backup & Replication on Synology NAS, LRP law firm created a high-performance VM backup appliance, where backup hardware, backup software, and backup storage are combined in a single box. “With NAKIVO Backup & Replication installed on a Synology NAS, all built-in components are integrated together, so it is fast to deploy and easy to manage the product. I have always been a big fan of the Synology products not only for their ease of use, but also because of the black box appliance philosophy. Since we always had good luck with Synology being a stable environment, I am comfortable running NAKIVO Backup & Replication on our hardware now,” says Darin.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication enables LRP law firm to consolidate their resources more professionally in terms of the amount of VM storage space available for backups, as well as helps dramatically increase VM backup speed. With the help of VMware Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology, all backup jobs are incredibly fast. “I was just blown away about how fast I went from not even knowing anything about the set up to scheduling backup jobs pretty easily. After the initial full VM backup, all subsequent backup jobs are 50% faster than with our previous VM backup tool. VM storage space also dropped by over 20%, so I can now almost double the number of backups,” says Darin.

At LRP law firm, most of the backup jobs are scheduled during the night time, while a couple of critical systems are backed up a couple times per day during the afternoon. With the help of the daily reports, Darin is aware of all the activities that happen within the product. With the GFS backup retention policy, LRP law firm is also able to maximize the number of recovery points. “I like the notification system much better now than with the previous tool. I receive nice reports and get confirmation of every job that I scheduled, as well as I get a weekly summary, so I am able to store everything for the archival purposes. In terms of the retention policy, I am keeping several last recovery points on a monthly and annual basis, so that we are definitely protected,” says Darin.

While maintaining fast VM backup speed is a huge advantage, having the ability to instantly recover individual files is also crucial to LRP law firm. “For us, it is really nice to have an ability to restore files in a pinch. Since our attorneys work with a huge number of files, this feature is a life saver. When time is of the essence and some files were deleted or lost, browsing, identifying, and restoring files in the shortest amount of time and without the full VM restore is amazing,” says Darin.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication, installed on a Synology NAS, enables LRP law firm to increase VM backup speed by 50% and reduce VM storage space by 20%. With backup retention policy, the firm can keep recovery points on a monthly and annual basis and use less storage space. With instant file recovery, the firm can easily identify lost or deleted files and recover them near-instantly. With quick and professional technical support and an abundance of documentation and blog posts, the switch to NAKIVO Backup & Replication was effortless. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a clean product with a nice esthetic. I enjoy the look of the job screen, the easiness to schedule backup jobs, and regular reports that are delivered to my email. I worked in IT for over 30 years and have experienced many backup systems and I always thought of backups as just a necessary evil. Before NAKIVO Backup & Replication, I was never excited about using the backup product, so for sure, I have had a pleasant and surprisingly enjoyable experience with NAKIVO Backup & Replication so far,” says Darin.

Company Profile

Headquartered in Fresno, California, Lang, Richert and Patch is a law firm that has developed an outstanding reputation in the community for high quality, results-oriented legal services. Lang, Richert and Patch has been recognized by Martindale-Hubbel as a “Firm of Distinction”, the highest honor bestowed by the organization. This long-standing reputation has given the firm the opportunity to serve sophisticated entities with broad ranges of legal needs. In the private sector, the firm’s clients include nationally recognized companies, including lenders, construction firms, and realty development companies. In the public sector, the clients include hospitals, universities, and schools. Each attorney brings superior credentials, characteristic determination, and creativity to serve the client. The firm employs open communication, strategic innovation, and the latest technology in striving to attain the greatest degree of efficiency and effectiveness. For more information, please visit www.lrplaw.net.