Seoul City Gas Deploys Nakivo Backup & Replication on Synology NAS

Nakivo, Inc. has announced that Seoul City Gas Co., Ltd. (SCG) has selected its Backup & Replication to protect their VMware environment.

SCG is a Korean-based company that is engaged in the distribution of liquefied natural gas. The company’s mission is to supply clean energy to the citizens of Seoul, while improving the environment for their convenient day-to-day life. It is making an effort to develop new technologies for distribution, construction, and gas utilization. Furthermore, it continues its growth in the upstream sector by actively participating in foreign gas and oil projects.

SCG’s datacenter is located in their Seoul HQs, and their IT infrastructure consists of six physical servers as well as approximately 40 VMware VMs. The VMs are used to operate internal business applications, including the company’s accounting processes, GIS, a call center, as well as groupware, SQL data, and infrastructure managing servers, such as DNS, WEB, DHCP, and development. In particular, the call center, GIS, SQL data, DNS, and groupware must be protected at all times, as these are necessary for providing efficient customer service. In the event of a hardware or software failure for any reason, normal business operations at SCG could be affected until particular servers can be recovered. Thus, data must be available on a daily basis, and a VM backup solution is required to protect this data to ensure its timely recoverability.

SCG’s previous backup software was designed for virtualized environments and was used by the company for many years to backup their physical servers. While this solution was okay for the physical environment, it could not manage the virtual environment with the same efficiency.

“With our previous backup product, we had to install agents on our VMware VMs, which was a time-consuming task. Moreover, the whole ordeal was complex. We had to spend a lot of time on backup administration, while we were also not sure if our backups could be recovered,” says Jeong-Hyun Cho, representative of system management, SCG. “Once we decided to move some of our data onto a Synology NAS device, we figured that maybe it was time for us to look for a proper VM backup solution that would offer us simplicity, performance, and integration with our Synology NAS.“

Easy Systems Inc. a VAD, recommendedBackup & Replication to SCG as a replacement for their previous product. Backup & Replication is a data protection solution that offers  features for VMware environments, in addition to providing integration with Synology NAS.

After a week of testing, SCG purchased the Nakivo solution to protect their virtual environment, ultimately because of the product’s ease-of-use, lower licensing costs, and Synology NAS integration.

“My first experience with the whole installation and configuration process was intuitional, light, and fast. When I saw the web interface for the first time, I knew that the management would be extremely easy for me. Installation of Nakivo Backup & Replication on our Synology NAS proved to be successful, and we are glad that we do not need to purchase any additional hardware for securing VM backups. Instead of purchasing separate backup or storage servers, we use a single Synology NAS device to process and store our VM backups,” explains Cho.

Backup & Replication provides SCG with full and forever-incremental VM backup that is faster than the company’s previous backup solution. Once a week, a full VM backup takes approximately 30 minutes, while forever-incremental VM backups take 10 minutes, once a day.

“Now, incremental VM backups jobs can be completed in under 10 minutes, which is at least 4 times faster than before. Nakivo Backup & Replication running on our Synology NAS box provides great functionality, improves VM backup speed, and provides great reports. Licensing costs for Nakivo Backup & Replication as well as the cost of the Synology box, were lower than the licensing cost of our previous installation,” says Cho.

For him, screenshot verification is one of the best features of the Nakivo solution. Screenshot verification automatically tests VMware backups and sends screenshots of test-recovered VMs.

“Screenshot verification provides a guarantee for us that our VM backups could, in fact, be recovered if a disaster occurs, which is important because the quick restoration of our business process is crucial. With the previous backup product, we once experienced a failed recovery, so screenshot verification is a paramount feature to have,” says Cho.

Backup & Replication offers SCG a way to recover VMs, files, and objects with instant VM recovery and granular recovery.

“Instant recovery is also a much-needed functionality, because not only can we recover entire VMs, but we are also able to recover individual files from VM backups with instant file recovery. When my co-workers require the recovery of specific files or folders, they can simple select them, push a button and in just a couple of minutes the files are recovered,” says Cho.

The solution installed on a Synology NAS provides Seoul City Gas with improved VM backup performance, the instant recovery of entire VMs and files, as well as peace of mind with screenshot verification. With Nakivo and Synology, SCG managed to improve their VM backup speed by 4X compared to their previous installation. With Nakivo, it can recover VMs, files, and folders. With the screenshot verification functionality, the company receives screenshots of test-recovered VMs to ensure that the VMs are, in fact, recoverable.

Thanks to screenshot verification, SCG does not need to perform monthly recovery tests anymore.

“In the past, I had doubts regarding the way in which our data was protected with the previous backup product, but once we switched to Nakivo Backup & Replication, we now can manage our IT infrastructure in a more reliable and simple way. Nakivo Backup & Replication installed on a Synology NAS provides us with reduced deployment time, minimized complexity, and improved VM backup speed for the whole district,” says Cho.