Backup for SIAM

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is an international society of more than 14,500 individual, academic, and corporate members from 85 countries. SIAM helps build cooperation between mathematics and the worlds of science and technology to solve real-world problems through its publications, conferences, and communities.

SIAM’s IT infrastructure is held at a single site, consisting of 10 physical servers and 70 virtual machines that run Windows and Linux. The virtual machines support the full stack of websites; therefore, any data loss would have a significant impact on SIAM’s operations. Publication, membership, and meeting processes would be severely impacted until fully restored. Previously, SIAM relied on a data protection solution for backing up VMs, yet this software required a significant amount of effort to recover from a complete disaster. What SIAM needed was a reliable data protection solution that could back up and recover all data and systems quickly, but within a reasonable budget.

A reliable solution

SIAM required a system that was able to perform a full restore from scratch in a matter of minutes using any backup media. After a pilot test, NAKIVO Backup & Replication fit the criteria for SIAM’s recovery-time-objective (RTO), which showed that SIAM would be able to recover from a complete disaster in about 50% to 75% of the time it would have taken with their previous product.

“NAKIVO Backup & Replication met our RTO expectations in terms of the recovery speed, and we are quite certain that we would be able to recover our data and servers much faster than in the past,” says Ted Kull, Director of Information Systems at SIAM. While RTO was a major driver, NAKIVO’s broad range of capabilities made it the logical choice for a complete solution.

“The decision to select NAKIVO Backup & Replication was done after the software ticked all our boxes, including fast recovery times, the flexibility of installation and configuration, the overall architecture of the product, and its price. Overall, the total cost of ownership proved to be worth it for us in the long run,” says Kull. “When deciding on a new recovery solution, NAKIVO offered the complete package for both virtualized and physical environments, at a flexible price. With versatile deployment options, NAKIVO Backup & Replication was the most flexible and convenient choice.”

Crucial peace of mind

With the implementation of NAKIVO Backup & Replication, SIAM can minimize downtime and ensure continuity of service, without fear of data loss. Now SIAM will be able to recover data from scratch in only a few minutes. “Our infrastructure is continuously backed up and recovery points are taken one to two times per day, depending on the nature of the source system,” says Kull. SIAM now enjoys a more complete and flexible solution while avoiding extra costs or expenses.

SIAM has discovered the advantages of NAKIVO’s technical support right from the product’s web interface, where customers can connect with a representative via a chat option. NAKIVO’s operation support system provided SIAM with an end-to-end customer experience, which allowed for full optimisation of their system. SIAM saved a tremendous amount of time on installation due to a straightforward process, from configuring transporters to running the first back-up job.

“From a daily operation perspective, we are happy, as NAKIVO Backup & Replication does not take an enormous amount of time to operate and almost everything is automated,” Kull concluded.