Cozzini Customer of Nakivo

Nakivo Inc. announced that Cozzini, LLC has selected its Backup & Replication to protect their VMware environment.

Headquartered in Chicago, IL, Cozzini is a provider of meat and food processing equipment and related technology and services with offices in the US, Brazil, Mexico, and Denmark. It offers products and services that can meet all of the food processing needs: preparation, reduction/emulsion systems, mixers, grinders, material handling systems, custom stainless fabrication, slicers, and more.

With four sites across the US, Mexico, and Europe, Cozzini’s virtual infrastructure consists of 10 ESXi hosts and at least 40 VMware VMs. VMware VMs store everything that relates to computing, including an ERP system, a document management system for engineers, and file and print services. Computer systems are critical to maintain the daily business operations and the company cannot afford to lose information such as drawings that are used to design the food processing equipment. Moreover, an ERP system that runs everything from historical sales, orders, customers, and accounting must be available 24/7 in order to support the company’s manufacturing facilities to the fullest potential.

“Firstly, we were using another VM backup solution for quite some time, however, due to some budget limitations, the product did not cover all of our VMs, but only the most critical ones. At the same time, we were using a disk backup from our SAN and other technics that were just too outdated. Since I wanted an opportunity to take a fresh look at our environment and I wanted a product that would cover all of our VMware VMs, I began a search for a dependable and fully featured VM backup solution that would not break our budget,” says Tony Alcaraz, corporate director of information systems, Cozzini.

While checking the add-on packages available to expand the functionality of the Synology NAS servers, Alcaraz came across Backup & Replication that was available for a download. After a demo and a trial period, Backup & Replication was purchased to protect the virtual environment at Cozzini.

“As of now, we have six Synology NAS servers and we are getting ready to use a couple of the servers for offsite backups also. Over the years, I have been dealing with Synology and had a positive experience because their servers are dependable, so when I found out that Nakivo Backup & Replication can be installed on a Synology NAS, I was happy because it is just a perfect idea to combine hardware and software,” says Alcaraz.

“I believe the integration with Synology NAS is what made us select Nakivo Backup & Replication. The installation process was fantastic, extremely seamless, and had zero issues. I was impressed by the ease of use and the look of the user interface and did not even need to read the instructions in the first place. Our primary goal was to set up backup jobs as quickly as possible and all was done in the easiest possible way,” says Alcaraz.

With Backup & Replication, Cozzini is able not only to perform full VM backup, but can also take advantage of forever-incremental backup.

“I have a group of VMs that I want to backup daily and a group that I want to backup on a monthly basis. With forever-incremental backup, backup jobs finish now anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. I constantly receive notifications and messages via email regarding backup job completion, so this gives me extra peace of mind,” says Alcaraz.

The VM backup appliance based on Synology NAS performs regular VM backups, and also provides recovery features, such as instant VM recovery and instant file recovery.

“We made several test recoveries for small VMs to ensure that they were recoverable. We managed to recover the entire VMs from their backups within seconds and the whole process was extremely easy. Instant file recovery will also be a useful feature for us in the future, as accidental file deletions can happen frequently,” says Alcaraz.

Backup & Replication installed on a Synology NAS protects the virtual environment at Cozzini and enables the company to backup and recover VMware VMs. With forever-incremental backup, backup jobs finish in under 30 minutes and instant VM recovery takes seconds to complete. In the nearest future, the company is also planning to send copies of VM backups offsite for an extra protection from ransomware.

“The ability to create a VM backup appliance by installing Nakivo Backup & Replication directly on a Synology NAS was the best decision. The biggest benefits right now that we see are the value, simplicity, and the ease of use and configuration. With Nakivo Backup & Replication, I definitely saved my personal time and, at the same time, our company managed to save the VM backup costs by 40% while switching to Nakivo Backup & Replication,” says Alcaraz.