French Institute of Electronics Microelectronics and Nanotechnology Selects Nakivo

Nakivo Inc. announced that the Institute of Electronics, Microelectronics, and Nanotechnology (IEMN) has selected it Backup & Replication to protect their hybrid virtual environment.

The IEMN is a joint research institute, established by four educational institutions. The institute has approximately 250 permanent staff and more than 180 doctoral and post-doctoral students. The research covers an area ranging from the physics of materials and nanostructures to telecommunications systems and acoustic and microwave instrumentation.

The IT infrastructure at the institute is 100% virtualized and consists of two hypervisor clusters with a total of 70 VMs. Approximately 75% of VMs run on VMware, while 25% run on Hyper-V. Some VMs store network services and web services, including DNS, DHCP, NAC, RDP gateway, and web applications. Other VMs act as file servers and store data produced by the researchers and engineers or store administrative files.

The main goal of the institute’s production infrastructure is to allow researchers, engineers, and students to work and collaborate not only on the institute’s premises, but also while traveling.

“We have tried different approaches to data protection and used multiple VM backup solutions. At the beginning, we used a simple file-based backup and stored data on a dedicated QNAP NAS, however, this approach was not scalable, as the number of our VMs increased. Next, we switched to trickier freeware/open source tools that allowed us to backup entire VMs rather than just files. However, these tools were quite difficult to implement and maintain and required sound knowledge of VMware and practical skills of Linux. We noticed performance issues and also had to pay additionally for the storage space used by backups, so it was becoming too costly. When we experienced two important failed recoveries, we knew it was time to search for a replacement,” says Mickaël Masquelin, IT department manager, IEMN.

By choosing Backup & Replication as the institute’s new VM backup solution, IEMN met its selection criteria: web interface, VMware CBT support, fast VM backup, and instant file and object recovery.

“Installing and configuring Nakivo Backup & Replication is simple to achieve, while the web interface is user-friendly and allows enough customization for job definition. Firstly, we tried an installation package for Linux, but when we noticed that the product could be installed on QNAP NAS, we immediately tried that. The experience was awesome, as we effortlessly managed to get a dedicated VM backup appliance that worked out of the box,” says Masquelin.

“After installing Nakivo Backup & Replication on our TVS-1271U-RP QNAP NAS, we do not have to worry about future updates or maintenance, as the update process is quite smooth. Thanks to global data deduplication and compression we not only saved VM storage space, but also saved money because we no longer need to purchase additional HDD space,” says Masquelin.

Compared to the institute’s previous VM backup solutions, VM backup is faster and easier to administer with Nakivo and QNAP. The dashboard provides enough details, such as backup size and bandwidth consumption, and backup jobs can also be followed in real time.

“VM backup is blazing fast! Previously, all backup jobs were scheduled for the evening time, after 10:00pm, and often did not finish until after 9:00 am the next day. With Nakivo Backup & Replication installed on QNAP NAS, the backup is 2.5X faster! Backup jobs start at the same time, but finish around 2:00am,” says Masquelin.

With instant file recovery and instant object recovery for Microsoft Active Directory, IEMN improves recovery time, if accidental file or objects deletions occur.

“We appreciate the ability to easily recover a single file in the VM, without having to recover an entire VM first. With Nakivo Backup & Replication, we can search for Active Directory objects and containers, view Active Directory object attributes, and also recover deleted Active Directory objects such as users,” says Masquelin.

Screenshot verification provides IEMN an automated way to near-instantly verify VM backups.

“With screenshot verification, I believe that our troubles with backup reliability are in the past. With this feature, we no longer have headaches and can see that we have a good backup and that VMs could be recovered, if necessary,” says Masquelin.

Backup & Replication installed on QNAP NAS provides IEMN with a 2.5X VM backup speed increase and VM storage space savings, in comparison to the previous VM backup solutions. With Backup & Replication, the institute can instantly recover files and active directory objects and near-instantly verify VM backups.

“With Nakivo Backup & Replication, our IT department can concentrate time on other IT-related tasks and does not have to worry about hypervisor upgrades or maintenance because we know that the product will help us in the upgrade process. We found a professional solution that covers all our needs, saves money, and provides reliability“, said Masquelin.