Zoos South Australia Uses Veeam

Veeam Software, Inc. announced that Zoos South Australia (Zoos SA), a not-for-profit conservation charity whose core revenue stream is from admissions, has chosen Veeam to ensure availability across its data centre.

Working with Veeam Silver ProPartner, Subnet, Zoos SA has been able to reduce the amount of time required for managing and monitoring backups of its 32 vSphere VMs from three days to just a fews. Moreover, it was able to improve file-level recovery from two hours to a few minutes, resulting in cost-savings of tens of thousands of dollars.

Zoos SA runs Australia’s second oldest zoo, Adelaide Zoo, a ‘pay-to-see’ attraction in South Australia and is 137 years old. It is the only zoo in the southern hemisphere to play home to the great panda. Also operated by Zoos SA, is the iconic Monarto Zoo, the largest open air zoo in the world, spanning a thousand hectares. The lion enclosure alone at Monarto is the size of Adelaide Zoo. On average, Zoos SA welcomes 500,000 visitors per year to both Zoos.

Adelaide Zoo and Monato Zoo are both open every day of the week and are the epitome of the ‘Always-On Business’, where uptime is crucial for of all the Zoo’s admissions and security camera systems for the animals, including animal support systems.

“Despite being a non-profit conservation charity, we are also running a business that operates daily, where park admission fees are our main source of revenue,” said Ashlen Naicker, ICT manager, Zoos. “An hour of downtime for either zoo can result in loss of revenue.“

To prevent such a loss, Zoos decided to change its admission system and commenced a search for a new data availability solution as part its IT overhaul.

“Our organisation was growing, but our legacy tool wasn’t growing with us,” continued Naicker. “The zoos rely on my team to get visitors through the doors and ensure they have an amazing experience. That means all systems have to be working flawlessly in the background, especially the admissions, Wi-Fi, and point-of-purchase – everything is virtualised. My team relies on HA in our data centre.”

The previous backup-to-tape tool was slow, sluggish and becoming unreliable therefore, Naicker and his team required a faster and more reliable solution. Zoos out to Subnet, an SA-based managed services provider for advice.

“Subnet recommended Veeam because it worked so well for its other clients,” Naicker said. “Subnet was spot on. We were tired of things going wrong with the legacy tool. We were ready for a high-performance availability solution.“

Veeam Backup and Replication was able to provide Zoos with a solution that brought confidence and peace of mind while they deployed the new admission system.

“As a core revenue stream, we’re always keen to improve on our admission system, which includes online bookings and other services such as venue hire,” continued Naicker. “We couldn’t have entertained the thought of a new system without being absolutely positive it could provide quick and reliable availability. That’s the biggest difference between Veeam and the legacy tool – steadfast performance.“

Another differentiator between the legacy tool and Veeam Backup & Replication is backup speed.

“The difference in speed is like chalk and cheese,” Naicker said. “I’d go gray waiting for a backup to complete with the legacy tool. With Veeam, this is instant and often. “Each day, Veeam delivers an email report notifying me of real-time monitoring, reporting and capacity planning for our backup infrastructure. Daily notification is a luxury that I did not have previously.“

Veeam Backup & Replication also compresses and deduplicate backup data better than the legacy tool, enabling Zoos to keep backups on site one year before archiving them off site. Data centre storage could only hold 21 days of backups made with the legacy tool.

A third differentiator between Veeam Backup & Replication and the legacy tool is ease-of-use.

“Veeam is so simple to use that our junior engineers are comfortable handling VM and file-level recovery on their own,” Naicker said. “When the VM running Exchange failed and I was out of the country, I talked them through VM recovery over the phone. There was no downtime and no data loss. The staff had no idea anything had happened. Veeam saved the day.“

“Businesses today, no matter their industry, are handling enormous amounts of data. This data is crucial to business operations, and downtime equals financial loss. No one, especially a non-profit organisation, can afford such risks,” commented Don Williams, VP, ANZ, Veeam. “I am proud that our solutions are able to support Zoos SA and allow them to run their operations seven days a week, all year round, without any worry.“