Mobile Computer Solutions Supplier DriverTech Deploys Nakivo

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

DriverTech develops mobile computer solutions for the commercial trucking, military, and emergency medical service industries in the US, Canada, and Mexico.

The DriverTech system provides an intelligent fleet management system with a range of services and applications for the transportation industry. It provides access to key information that improves driver quality of life and trucking efficiency metrics.

DriverTech’s IT infrastructure consists of three sites: two primary locations and one DR location. Roughly 50 VMware VMs run SQL servers, file servers, and various other services. DriverTech needs to protect their VMs with full and forever-incremental backup, and at same time, replicate those VMs to their DR location for an extra layer of protection. For most companies, any kind of an unfortunate event, human error, or a physical disaster can lead to data loss and result in downtime. That is why DriverTech needs a reliable VM backup solution they can rely on to provide them with quick VM recovery, should disaster strike.

“For VM backup, we used a different software product in the past. For VM replication, we used SAN replication. We were basically doing SAN volume replication, but we really wanted to switch to software based VM replication. When we decided to move on to another technology, we wanted to find a product that would offer us both VM backup and VM replication with greater flexibility. Furthermore, the VM backup software had to be reliable, fast, and user-friendly,” says Jay Newhouse, IT director, DriverTech.

DriverTech tested nearly a dozen different backup solutions available on the market, and ultimately chose Nakivo to protect their virtual environment because they found it to be the easiest product in terms of implementation and configuration. At their primary location, DriverTech chose to deploy Nakivo as a pre-configured virtual appliance because such deployment allows for better scalability and flexibility, in terms of supporting simultaneous tasks. During the first six months, Nakivo was primarily used for backing up VMs at DriverTech’s primary site. After that, because the setup process was effortless, DriverTech started to replicate VMs between their three locations.

With Nakivo, DriverTech developed their own special schedule for VM backups. In addition, with data deduplication and compression, it noticed considerable storage space savings.

“Currently, we backup the primary VMs at our main location twice per day and replicate them as well. At one of the secondary locations, we backup VMs as often as every 30 minutes. On average, Nakivo Backup & Replication takes about two hours to finish all the backup jobs. As for the storage space savings, we have saved quite a bit of storage by making the switch – probably at least 70%. As a result, we are doing VM backups more frequently and keeping them longer,” says Newhouse.

Nakivo also provides DriverTech with the ability to replicate individual VMs and all VMs within VMware containers.

“By creating VM replicas and storing them offsite, we ensure near-instant data recoverability in case of a disaster. If something major happens, we can immediately fail over from the source VM to the VM replica. With the SAN replication, we were doing volume replication, and now we can finally refine that to VM replication,” says Newhouse.

Nakivo deployed as a pre-configured virtual appliance provides DriverTech with VM backup and VM replication within one product. DriverTech can backup their main VMs on a daily basis, with backup jobs taking two hours to complete. It uses 70% less storage space with the product’s data deduplication and compression, and thus can perform VM backups more frequently. Lastly, it can replicate VMs to their secondary locations to ensure near-instant recoverability in case of a disaster.

“Nakivo Backup & Replication is one of the easiest backup products in terms of usability on the market. Now, I have both VM backup and VM replication in one product, eliminating the need to manage two separate systems. Overall, with Nakivo Backup & Replication, we have achieved better flexibility and scalability,” says Newhouse.