Zmanda Automates Backups at VDP Fonderia in Italy

VDP Fonderia SpA is an European leader in cast iron
production.

Established in 1992, VDP is the result of a joint venture between
several foundries dating back three generations. Today, the company manages two
foundries in Northern Italy with
technologies which can range in production from one pound to
over one hundred and forty thousand pounds components (70 tons). The combination
of various foundries, components, customers and vendors, creates an increasing amount of critical data that VDP deems crucial for its
short-term and long-term success.

As the company grew and acquired a second foundry, the
volume of data they were managing surged, and VDP realized that they needed a backup and recovery solution to protect a wide array of different
files, databases, emails, applications, and address books.

However, the process
proved to be more challenging than previously estimated. When dealing with
different backup products, VDP painfully discovered that most use proprietary
data formats, which require specific tools and operating systems for management
and recovery purposes. VDP was concerned that, in an emergency situation,
accessing and recovering stored data would not be possible unless all the
required software and tools were installed in each system used. Additionally,
while restoring files and databases, it was unacceptably common for them to
find out that data was missing, even though no errors were identified during
the process by the backup utility, resulting in a dangerously unreliable
infrastructure.

VDP then turned to Zmanda, and they realized its
competitive advantage. Reliability, ease of use, centralized administration,
affordability, and flexibility were essential requirements for a backup and
recovery solution, and Amanda Enterprise represented a fit.

Leonardo Corato, the company’s ICT manager, explained that "after years of
using CA ARCserve, Veritas Backup, Acronis, and Tivoli, we wanted to use a more flexible
tool. We evaluated Bacula and Zmanda. We chose Zmanda because of its
reliability."

VDP’s infrastructure comprises of a number of
servers and clients running different operating systems, and storing databases,
file systems, emails, and applications of different nature. They needed a
consolidated solution for enterprise-wide backup, with a simple to use
management console that would control backup and recovery schedules,
activities, and logs, and would allow remote access from any browser, including
smartphones. They chose Amanda Enterprise.

"It is open source and
customizable", Corato added, "and it’s very very stable. Its
affordability and its low network and resources usage were also determining
factors in our adoption."

Corato was also complimentary of Zmanda’s technical support,
noting that it was fast, helpful, and effective.

"We have a stable system always updated. We sleep
well," he concluded