The Business Challenge

Whether a field workforce consists of 25 workers or 2,500, there’s a direct correlation between productivity levels and the information management tools and methods in place. MSI Data develops workforce software to help organizations boost productivity.

Software developers make up the majority of MSI’s staff. They develop the solutions that set MSI apart from competitors and enable the company to win customers such as Charter Cable and Valmont Industries. It’s no wonder that protecting intellectual property is a top business priority.

Protecting intellectual property became a challenge when MSI began virtualizing IT systems on VMware vSphere. The backup tool that worked well with physical servers did not work well with virtual machines (VMs). Backing up 200GB took 23 hours, and recovery was unreliable. If critical IT systems can’t be recovered, MSI runs the risk of catastrophic data loss, including components of intellectual property.

“We anticipated backup and recovery being challenging, so we didn’t virtualized our critical IT systems until we had full confidence we could protect them,” said Dan Brunnquell, Systems Engineer at MSI Data. “We immediately began looking for data protection intended for virtualization.”

The Veeam Solution

Veeam® Backup Essentials™ was designed and built for virtualization. Veeam supported MSI’s digital transformation to virtualization by ensuring critical IT systems are available 24.7.365. Veeam helps MSI protect intellectual property and maintain a competitive edge in the market.

Veeam delivers 24.7.365 Availability of MSI’s IT systems through a combination of backup, replication and high-speed recovery. MSI uses Veeam to back up on site for instant recovery, replicate on site for high availability and replicate off site to the cloud for disaster recovery (DR).

A Veeam feature called Veeam Cloud Connect lets MSI point replicas to SingleHop, a global provider of cloud services. Veeam encrypts MSI’s data on site, in flight and at rest in SingleHop’s cloud. If MSI loses its onsite data center to a fire, flood or any crisis, critical IT systems can be recovered quickly from SingleHop’s cloud. Veeam helped MSI orchestrate a first-rate DR strategy that guarantees business continuity and rivals the strategies of multi-billion dollar corporations.

“Between ease-of-use and powerful functionality, Veeam is unique; there is no comp,” Brunnquell said. “Veeam lets me run an enterprise IT infrastructure by myself, and I still have time to spin up as many VMs as our developers need to build and test software.”

Brunnquell is a one-man IT department. He keeps IT systems running, protects intellectual property and supports MSI’s workforce.

“Veeam helps me take full advantage of virtualization,” he said. “If a VM starts to reach its data capacity, Veeam’s Quick Migration lets me migrate the VM to larger storage without shutting down the VM and impacting employees. Veeam also lets me migrate VMs to developers who work remotely. I export a VM from a Veeam backup, pop the VM into Dropbox and they download it.”

Veeam also helps MSI save money.

“Before we began using Veeam Cloud Connect, a vendor quoted a $20,000 cloud solution plus $10,000 per year to maintain it,” Brunnquell said. “Veeam and SingleHop were 99 percent less expensive, and it only took me 10 minutes to point our replicas to SingleHop’s cloud. It doesn’t get any easier than that.”

The Results

• Enables multi-faceted DR strategy
  Veeam and SingleHop provide MSI with a comprehensive DR strategy that rivals the strategies of multi-billion dollar corporations. Veeam delivers 24.7.365 Availability of critical IT systems in MSI’s data center and in SingleHop’s cloud.
• Ensures business continuity in times of crisis
  “Thanks to Veeam and SingleHop, we know we recover our key business systems fast, including our primary domain controller, file server, SQL Server and code server, where our intellectual property lies,” Brunnquell said. “Business continues as usual.”
• Saves $30,000 in cloud DR costs
  Using Veeam to replicate critical IT systems to SingleHop’s cloud was 99 percent less expensive than a vendor’s quote for DR in the cloud, saving $30,000.