Customer Success Stories
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, commonly referred to as Rutgers University, Rutgers, or RU, is a public research university in New Jersey. It is the largest institution of higher education in New Jersey.
Rutgers was in search of an affordable backup solution. Zmanda came to the rescue. Over the past decade, Rutgers University has been able to save tens of thousands of dollars by using Zmanda backup software. Zmanda provided a stable and comprehensive backup solution with nearly no crashes reported since their product usage started in the year 2010. Rutgers was able to move from traditional dump storage to a more reliant software based on full and incremental backup solutions. Zmanda also provided the customer with multiple storage solutions where the data could be stored on traditional on-premise storage solution or cloud storage solution. The features of Zmanda that impressed Rutgers University the most was that it provided them with immediate cost savings and an accurate backup solution with increased storage efficiency.
Business Challenges
- Combination of hardware & software failures with previous backup solutions.
- Finding an affordable backup solution.
- Finding a backup solution after migrating to Isilon storage, since Isilon did not have its own proprietary backup software.
Chosen Solution
- Amanda Enterprise Backup Server
- MYSQL plugin
Business Benefits
- Great pricing: Amanda Enterprise was affordable option for the university.
- Support: “Zmanda support is excellent; the support technicians are very polite and helpful.” -IT Administrator at Rutgers
- Ability to backup to both their OS and storage
Allegro
Allegro, the biggest Polish e-commerce platform, began humbly. In 1999, creator Arjan Bakker teamed up with a 19-year-old coder to create a better way to buy and sell goods on the Polish Web. This homespun project which started with only eight people working out of a small apartment took off and today Allegro Group employs nearly 5000 people in many of CEE countries and serves millions of members in a thriving online sales community.
But the owners ran into a problem: When a company is predicated entirely on safe financial transactions and bulletproof database functionality, backing up that data is mission critical. Allegro was exploding, and the company's data needs were increasing at a rate that quickly outpaced its piecemeal storage solutions.
Business Challenges
- Allegro needed to find alternative to expensive backup system that came with the endorsement of one of America's top tech companies.
- With existing backup system problems arose over time, including skyrocketing costs and ongoing issues with proprietary file formats that proved hard to restore and nearly impossible to liberate from the storage company's servers.
Chosen Solution
- Amanda Enterprise Backup Server
- Zmanda Linux, Windows and Solaris Clients
Business Benefits
- Great pricing: Amanda Enterprise costs a fraction of competitors' proprietary solutions.
- Ease of use: Amanda Enterprise makes it easy to backup, restore and leverage the entire system through an intuitive interface
- Support: Allegro loves Zmanda's 24/7 tech support and speedy turnaround times.
VDP Fonderia
Italy-based VDP Fonderia is the European leader in cast iron production. Established in 1992, VDP is the result of a joint venture between several foundries dating back three generations. Today, the company manages two foundries in Northern Italy with industry-leading technologies, which can range in production from one pound to over one hundred and forty thousand pounds components (70 tons!). The combination of various foundries, components, customers and vendors, creates an ever-increasing amount of critical data that VDP deems crucial for its short-term and long-term success.
Business Challenges
- Protect a considerable number of servers and clients running different operating systems, and storing databases, file systems, emails, and applications of different nature
- The company became frustrated with unreliable backups and restores, and suffered from our competitors' use of proprietary data formats, which makes recovering data a tedious, or sometimes impossible process
- VDP needed an open source product that would allow to easily recover data using standard operating system tools and utilities
Chosen Solution
- Amanda Enterprise backup server
- Zmanda Linux, Windows, and VMware clients
- MS SQL agent
- Operating systems: Windows 2008, XP, and 7, Ubuntu 10.04 and 11.04, Red Hat 5.6
Business Benefits
- Consistent and reliable backups
- Open source, customizable, highly scalable architecture
- Simplified data recovery with standard data formats
- Peace of mind, being able to rely on a dependable and affordable solution for enterprise-wide backup
Schryver Medical, Inc.
Denver-based Schryver Medical, Inc. is the leader in healthcare products and services for long-term care facilities, hospitals, assisted-living centers and homecare patients throughout the western United States. The company has 650 employees who provide mobile imaging, laboratory, diagnostics, and medical waste disposal services across seven states.
Business Challenges
- Schryver Medical is growing at a tremendous pace and needs an IT infrastructure that can scale accordingly.
- As a healthcare organization, Schryver Medical has unique data protection requirements due to stringent HIPAA compliance regulations. All of the company's digital patient records must be backed up and secured in a manner that doesn't compromise patient privacy and regulatory compliance.
- The company became frustrated with cookie-cutter solutions with steep licensing fees, poor customer support and proprietary formats.
Chosen Solution
- Zmanda solutions: Amanda Enterprise (AE) with the Zmanda Disaster Recovery Option
- Backup Agents: Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, and VMware vSphere and ESXi
- Size of installation: 100 Windows and Linux Servers. 650 Desktops.
Business Benefits
- Schryver Medical is saving more than 50 percent with Amanda Enterprise compared to the cost of running comparable proprietary solutions.
- The company enjoys the open source benefits of Amanda Enterprise including the flexibility to run customized scripts and the ability to store their backup files in open formats.
- The company appreciates knowing that Zmanda's industry-leading, technically savvy support services are there to back them up if they ever run into any issues.
VeePee
As a Managed Service Provider (MSP), Paris-based VeePee www.veepee.com is in the business of helping others work smarter. The company takes industry-leading technologies and resources, and proactively manages them to provide efficient and affordable services for its customers in the press and media industry. These businesses depend on VeePee to adopt best of breed solutions that are both cost effective and meet the always-on demands of their high performance environments.
Business Challenges
- VeePee needed to confidently and securely protect their hosting architecture & groupware solutions, and deliver on the high demands of their service level agreements (SLAs).
- As VeePee's business portfolio multiplied they outgrew the capabilities of their backup solution and needed to replace it with something more scalable and sophisticated.
- VeePee managed a large volume of data stored in MySQL databases and was regularly exporting each database to a file in order to backup its contents. This process was both cumbersome and costly in terms of time and performance.
Chosen Solution
- Zmanda Solutions: Amanda Enterprise and Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL
- Zmanda Backup Agents: MS Exchange, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL
- Zmanda Backup Clients: Debian 5, Ubuntu, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008
Business Benefits
- VeePee turned to Zmanda for the ease of use, centralized administration, superior performance, and scalability of Amanda Enterprise and Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM).
- ZRM has streamlined the backup of MySQL for VeePee, providing hot backups of databases and applications and point-in-time, 1-click restoration. ZRM's fast and scalable backups of large databases save VeePee considerable time and money compared to their previous MySQL backup method.
- VeePee values the innovation and robustness provided by a world-wide community of developers and the ability to write their own scripts to backup applications that are currently not supported out of the box.
- Amanda Enterprise and ZRM are both affordable and carry fixed subscription-based pricing, making them ideal for an MSP like VeePee who passes the expense on to its clients.
Six Degrees Games, Inc.
Watch any kid at a local gaming arcade and you're likely to see a pocket full of game tickets that can be cashed in for stuffed animals, toys or, perhaps, a new pet goldfish. Collecting game tickets in the physical world is easy. Reach a level of success while playing a game and you'll be rewarded for your efforts; reach a higher level and you'll earn even more tickets.
Creating an online game where users can earn tickets that can later be "cashed in" can be a challenging proposition, however. Six Degrees Games, an online publisher of sports entertainment , has developed a virtual sports destination, www.ActionAllstars.com, that enables tweens to play games, save their results, and earn credits that can later be cashed in to expand their online gaming experience.
Business Challenges
- Six Degrees Games sees more than one million new Athletes created every month, each with the ability to customize their avatars, accumulate game credits and buy virtual prizes.
- The combination of users, identities, games-in-play, credits and prizes generates a lot of data at a very fast pace — all of which is core to the company's success.
- In addition to regular full backups, the company must complete an incremental backup of MySQL every 15 minutes, in order to be able to quickly recover to any point in time after a data loss situation.
Chosen Solution
- Six Degrees Games sees more than one million new Athletes created every month, each with the ability to customize their avatars, accumulate game credits and buy virtual prizes.
- The combination of users, identities, games-in-play, credits and prizes generates a lot of data at a very fast pace — all of which is core to the company's success.
- In addition to regular full backups, the company must complete an incremental backup of MySQL every 15 minutes, in order to be able to quickly recover to any point in time after a data loss situation.
Business Benefits
- ZRM provides a central place to backup all information.
- The browser-based management console in ZRM allows the company manage backup operations from anywhere with internet access.
- ZRM's compression feature enables Six Degrees Games to condense data at a 10:1 ratio, thereby saving a significant amount of disk space.
- The comprehensive reporting features in ZRM alert administrators any time a backup fails.
- Zmanda's comprehensive support, training and consulting services are always quick to respond and resolve any issues.
3Jane Digital Holdings Inc.
The growing popularity of new kinds of social networks and online interactions has given rise to a number of innovative companies that provide services and tools to develop online communities.
One example is 3Jane Digital Holdings, which sells software products, tools and consulting services that enable global companies such as E*Trade, Walt Disney, and Electronic Arts to develop some of the most sophisticated social networks in the world. The company offers end-to-end project management and services including design, development, infrastructure, content distribution, audience growth and advertising representation.
Business Challenges
- 3Jane produces a vast amount of data in the form of custom source code, database schemas, dynamically generated web content, corporate email and other proprietary information, that must be protected. It is both critical to the services they provide and vital to the company's operational efficiency.
- The company lacked centralized management for backups across the enterprise.
- New servers required custom-level setups to ensure backups were performed properly.
- Database environment which required backup included: Dual-master replication, single-master with multiple slave replication, ACID compliant transaction requirements.
Chosen Solution
- Zmanda Solutions: Amanda Enterprise and Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL
- Size of installation: (AE) 15 Linux and 2 Windows Clients, Agent for Microsoft Exchange Server; (ZRM) 7 MySQL servers
- Operating systems: Fedora 8, 9, 10, and 11, Windows Server 2003, 2008
- Backup Agents: Microsoft Exchange 2007
- MySQL Applications: MySQL 5.0 and 5.1 data driven web applications
Business Benefits
- The ease of use, platform independence, and Amazon S3 integration within AE allowed 3Jane to deploy a robust, complete and easy to manage backup and restore solution to include both onsite and offsite data storage.
- AE had the best-cost entry point and was the least intrusive to the company's daily IT operations.
- ZRM's compression feature enables Six Degrees Games to condense data at a 10:1 ratio, thereby saving a significant amount of disk space.
- Zmanda's solutions worked with the hardware that was already in place and was a seamless fit.
- The ease of use of both AE and ZRM allows 3Jane to save time and money training IT staff to manage the backup processes.
Haas Cabinet Co., Inc.
Carlos Haas ("the Colonel" and founder of Haas Cabinet of Sellersburg, Indiana) began building cabinets as a hobby in a barn on his southern Indiana farm in 1939. Today, Haas Cabinet enables do-it-yourselfers and homeowners to modernize their homes by creating larger or more functional kitchens, expanded bathrooms or creating a home-office. As demand for these remodels increases, the demands on Haas Cabinet’s data storage needs increases as well.
Business Challenges
- Each production server had its own internal backup system with various tape technologies.
- One person was responsible for the Windows backup and another person was in charge of the Linux backup.
- Backup solution had too many independent parts, which were prone to failure.
- Company did not want to continue using ad hoc “silo level” backup techniques.
Chosen Solution
- Zmanda Solutions: Amanda Enterprise and Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL
- Size of installation: 11 Backup Clients, 1 Backup Server
- Operating systems: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5, Fedora, Windows 2003 server
- Backup Server: Dell PowerEdge 2950 (RHEL 5) with a 1.5T usable RAID array for 5 weeks of weekday-only backups. Remaining disk space is used for 30 days of incremental backup with ZRM for MySQL.
- A Dell PV-114T LTO-3 is attached to the server for use during the weekly full backup to tape.
- Backup Clients: Zmanda Client for Linux (6), Zmanda Client for Windows (5)
Business Benefits
- Amanda Enterprise enabled Haas Cabinet to implement a consolidated solution for enterprise-wide backup.
- Implementing a single, unified backup strategy that can be manage via the Zmanda Management Console by anyone in the IT department has freed up valuable time that can be devoted to other tasks.
- Haas Cabinet has also been able to reduce hardware and tape costs with the deployment of a single, right-sized expandable server for both disk-to-disk and disk-to-tape backups.
Zen Innovations (Global Trade Tracker)
Zen Innovations is the home of the Global Trade Tracker, a powerful web-based tool that is used to access original trade statistics from the world's principal trading countries. Global Trade Tracker provides customers with a clear and objective picture of the trade flows for more than 55 countries around the world. The tracker provides critical information on the value and quantity of goods (e.g. oil, precious metals, food, live stock, frozen goods, pharmaceuticals, chemicals) being imported and exported around the world.
Business Challenges
- Need to backup critical and fast-changing data
- Find a lower cost backup and recovery solution without compromising functionality
- Centrally manage backup of multiple platforms via a web-based GUI
- Capability to do backups regularly and be in a position to recover data quickly without too much manual intervention
- Initial home-grown approach (scripts and manual backup procedures) was neither scalable nor suitable to work efficiently.
Chosen Solution
- Amanda Enterprise Server and Clients
- Backup Server running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10
- Backup Clients for SLES 10 , Solaris 10, Mac OS X & Windows XP Pro
- Sun StorageTek SL 24 Tape Autoloader
Business Benefits
- The administration via Zmanda Management Console which handled all the set up and interaction with the SL24 tape stacker, helped to make the backup process very simple and cut down on a lot of work for Zen’s system engineer
- The ability to support multiple platforms - current and future
- Peace of mind knowing that all systems are backed up and that all corporate data is safe
PowerReviews
PowerReviews is an enterprise solutions company that provides customer reviews and social merchandising solutions to multi-channel retailers and their shoppers. PowerReviews’ technology platform collects, organizes, structures and moderates relevance-based reviews to help online retailers to significantly boost their sales.
Business Challenges
- Reduce risk associated with hardware failure
- Ability to backup file systems as well as applications
- Need a scalable backup solution to protect an ever growing heterogeneous IT infrastructure
- Cost reduction
Chosen Solution
- Amanda Enterprise Backup Server
- Zmanda Mac OS X Clients
- Zmanda Windows Clients
- Zmanda QuickStart Service Pack
Business Benefits
- Reduced corporate risk by implementing a reliable backup solution
- Improved backup operations across Linux, Mac and Windows systems & applications
- Increased backup flexibility by allowing employees to backup locally or remotely via VPN
- Ease of adding new clients
- Reduced storage hardware cost by having a clearer picture of backup storage utilization
- Reduced storage requirements with ability to exclude certain file type such as MP3
Vyatta
Vyatta has changed the networking world by developing the first commercially supported, open source router and firewall solution. Vyatta solutions combine the features, performance, and reliability of an enterprise router and firewall with the cost savings, flexibility, and security of open source to introduce new levels of economics, choice, and control into the network.
Business Challenges
- In-house custom backup scripts not scalable nor reliable
- Need to support multiple flavors of Linux including Fedora, Debian, Red Hat and Ubuntu
- Need a backup software with an easy-to-use GUI
- Require open data formats
Chosen Solution
- Amanda Enterprise Backup Servers
- Zmanda Linux Clients
Business Benefits
- More efficient utilization of IT resources by eliminating custom backup scripts
- Automated backup processes with reliable recovery built in
- Simple installation and GUI-based backup administration further reduces IT costs
- Added flexibility to recover data using basic Linux tar and gzip commands without requiring backup software
Prognosys Biosciences
Prognosys Biosciences is a leader in genomics. The company develops and applies innovative DNA sequencing technologies to enable predictive medicine.
Business Challenges
- Protect colossal amounts of molecular data (>20 TB)
- Eliminate risks associated with equipment failure
- Reduce costs
- Increase data security
- Access to open source code and archived data
Chosen Solution
- Amanda Enterprise Backup Server on Linux
- Zmanda Solaris Clients
- Zmanda QuickStart Service Pack
Business Benefits
- Improved backup performance and ability to scale with data and system growth
- Reduced risk with dependable backup verification and restore
- Reduced costs by 80%
- Increased data security with client or server side encryption and role-based data access
- Achieved vendor independence with the ability to restore data using standard operating system tools and utilities
- Increased operational reliability with 24x7 technical support by Zmanda
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