success story backup flybe transportation
SUCCESS STORY
Europe’s Largest Regional Airline Protects Reservation and Company Data with Veeam Backup & Replication “Veeam Backup & Replication is well-regarded in the virtualization community because it offers unique features, such as SureBackup and Instant VM Recovery.” — James Richards Virtualization and Server Specialist Flybe
The Business Challenge INDUSTRY:
Aviation COMPANY:
Flybe is Europe’s leading regional airline and the United Kingdom’s number one domestic carrier.
THE CHALLENGE: Find a scalable backup tool for a large, growing virtualized environment that automatically verifies the recoverability of every backup and provides instant virtual machine recovery.
Flybe’s e-commerce web site, www.flybe.com, processes a very large number of flight searches and reservations. Flybe’s IT team supports this web site, the company’s internal computing services (email, file and print, applications) and all employees. The IT infrastructure includes hundreds of virtual machines (VMs) that run the web site and multiple applications, such as Java, Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange 2010 and some specifically devoted to aircraft maintenance. “Each of these virtual machines is critical for day-to-day operations that drive revenue, so downtime is not an option,” said James Richards, Virtualization and Server Specialist at Flybe. “When the native backup and recovery product we were using proved to be limited in scope, we began looking for a highly scalable backup tool that could handle hundreds of VMs.” James and his colleagues experienced several problems with the native solution. “This tool is fine if you’re running a small number of VMs, but it has restrictions with large deployments,” he explained. “First, it was limited to 500 GB backup datastores. It also didn’t offer application-level recovery or automatic backup verification either, so we had to manually check backup jobs every day. It did offer integrity checks, but we couldn’t do backups or restores on the destination being checked, and sometimes those checks took a long time. It just wasn’t conducive to a large and growing virtualized environment like ours. Instead, we needed a scalable and flexible backup solution with a low support overhead, quick recovery options for applications like Exchange and the ability to automatically test restores.”
The Veeam Solution Flybe worked with Softcat, a leading provider of software licensing, hardware, security and related IT services to corporate and public sector organizations, to implement Veeam Backup & Replication™. Flybe’s IT team uses Veeam to back up production VMs daily and test VMs weekly. “We couldn’t perform daily backups on this many VMs in the past because the backup window was just too long with the previous tool,” James said. “Veeam Backup & Replication is twice as fast as that product, enabling us to back up more frequently, from weekly to daily.” A full VM restore is much faster now too, thanks to vPowerTM, the breakthrough technology in Veeam Backup & Replication that lets Flybe’s IT team run a VM directly from a backup file. vPower enables several unique capabilities, including Instant VM Recovery.
To learn more, visit: www.veeam.com
SUCCESS STORY
THE SOLUTION: Veeam Backup & Replication
RESULTS: • Full VM restores take minutes, without disrupting users • Individual objects from any virtualized application are recovered quickly • Backup speed doubles and backup window shrinks, enabling more frequent backups
“Veeam’s Instant VM Recovery capability is amazing,” James said. “When there was a problem with one of the VMs that runs an important aircraft maintenance application, I kicked off Instant VM Recovery and users were able to access the application within minutes. Then I transferred the VM from the Veeam NFS storage to our SAN storage with the application still running, and users never knew the difference.” Instant VM Recovery enables IT professionals to run a VM directly from a compressed and deduplicated backup file on regular backup storage, eliminating the need to extract the backup and copy it to production storage. James and his colleagues simply start the VM from the backup in minutes. Members of Flybe’s IT team rely on another capability in Veeam Backup & Replication: U-AIR™ (Universal Application-Item Recovery), which lets them recover individual objects from any virtualized application, without requiring agents. “We use U-AIR for Exchange e-mail restores,” James explained. “Before U-AIR, the whole database had to be staged to disk before it could be opened; then we retrieved individual items and restored them to a user’s mailbox. This took more than one workday to complete. With Veeam, it takes less than an hour.” James and his colleagues use another capability enabled by vPower. SureBackup™ lets them automatically test the recoverability of backups. “I review the logs every morning and see that applications were successfully booted and connectivity was established from the backup the night before,” he said. “It is very reassuring to know these backups are successful every day.”
The Results Full VM restores take minutes, without disrupting users “UK flight operator Flybe won the award for best vituralisation for disaster recovery project for its use of Veeam Backup and Replication v5.”
The Instant VM Recovery capability in Veeam Backup & Replication lets Flybe’s IT team restore an entire machine from a backup in minutes. From the time the team learned about a problem with a VM that runs an aircraft maintenance application until employees were able to access the application took mere minutes.
Individual objects from any virtualized application are recovered quickly The U-AIR capability in Veeam Backup & Replication comes in handy when Flybe’s IT team needs to recover e-mails for employees who accidentally delete them. Before Veeam was implemented, this process took more than one day. With Veeam, it takes minutes.
Backup speed doubles and backup window shrinks, enabling more frequent backups Veeam Backup & Replication performs VM backups twice as fast as Flybe’s previous backup tool. Since the backup window has shrunk significantly, the IT team performs more frequent backups on critical VMs.
About Veeam Software Veeam Software, an Elite VMware Technology Alliance Partner, develops innovative software to manage VMware vSphere®. Veeam Backup & Replication with vPower™ provides advanced Virtualization-Powered Data Protection™ and is the #1 VM backup solution. Veeam nworks extends enterprise monitoring to VMware and includes the Veeam nworks Management Pack™ for VMware management in Microsoft System Center and the Veeam nworks Smart Plug-in™ for VMware management in HP Operations Manager. Veeam ONE™ provides a single solution to optimize the performance, configuration and utilization of vSphere environments and includes: Veeam Monitor™ for easy-to-deploy VMware monitoring; Veeam Reporter™ for VMware capacity planning, change tracking and documentation; and Veeam Business View™ for VMware business service management and categorization. Learn more about Veeam Software by visiting www.veeam.com.
To learn more, visit: www.veeam.com © 2011 Veeam Software. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 10282011
Europe’s Largest Regional Airline Protects Reservation and Company Data with Veeam Backup & Replication “Veeam Backup & Replication is well-regarded in the virtualization community because it offers unique features, such as SureBackup and Instant VM Recovery.” — James Richards Virtualization and Server Specialist Flybe
The Business Challenge INDUSTRY:
Aviation COMPANY:
Flybe is Europe’s leading regional airline and the United Kingdom’s number one domestic carrier.
THE CHALLENGE: Find a scalable backup tool for a large, growing virtualized environment that automatically verifies the recoverability of every backup and provides instant virtual machine recovery.
Flybe’s e-commerce web site, www.flybe.com, processes a very large number of flight searches and reservations. Flybe’s IT team supports this web site, the company’s internal computing services (email, file and print, applications) and all employees. The IT infrastructure includes hundreds of virtual machines (VMs) that run the web site and multiple applications, such as Java, Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange 2010 and some specifically devoted to aircraft maintenance. “Each of these virtual machines is critical for day-to-day operations that drive revenue, so downtime is not an option,” said James Richards, Virtualization and Server Specialist at Flybe. “When the native backup and recovery product we were using proved to be limited in scope, we began looking for a highly scalable backup tool that could handle hundreds of VMs.” James and his colleagues experienced several problems with the native solution. “This tool is fine if you’re running a small number of VMs, but it has restrictions with large deployments,” he explained. “First, it was limited to 500 GB backup datastores. It also didn’t offer application-level recovery or automatic backup verification either, so we had to manually check backup jobs every day. It did offer integrity checks, but we couldn’t do backups or restores on the destination being checked, and sometimes those checks took a long time. It just wasn’t conducive to a large and growing virtualized environment like ours. Instead, we needed a scalable and flexible backup solution with a low support overhead, quick recovery options for applications like Exchange and the ability to automatically test restores.”
The Veeam Solution Flybe worked with Softcat, a leading provider of software licensing, hardware, security and related IT services to corporate and public sector organizations, to implement Veeam Backup & Replication™. Flybe’s IT team uses Veeam to back up production VMs daily and test VMs weekly. “We couldn’t perform daily backups on this many VMs in the past because the backup window was just too long with the previous tool,” James said. “Veeam Backup & Replication is twice as fast as that product, enabling us to back up more frequently, from weekly to daily.” A full VM restore is much faster now too, thanks to vPowerTM, the breakthrough technology in Veeam Backup & Replication that lets Flybe’s IT team run a VM directly from a backup file. vPower enables several unique capabilities, including Instant VM Recovery.
To learn more, visit: www.veeam.com
SUCCESS STORY
THE SOLUTION: Veeam Backup & Replication
RESULTS: • Full VM restores take minutes, without disrupting users • Individual objects from any virtualized application are recovered quickly • Backup speed doubles and backup window shrinks, enabling more frequent backups
“Veeam’s Instant VM Recovery capability is amazing,” James said. “When there was a problem with one of the VMs that runs an important aircraft maintenance application, I kicked off Instant VM Recovery and users were able to access the application within minutes. Then I transferred the VM from the Veeam NFS storage to our SAN storage with the application still running, and users never knew the difference.” Instant VM Recovery enables IT professionals to run a VM directly from a compressed and deduplicated backup file on regular backup storage, eliminating the need to extract the backup and copy it to production storage. James and his colleagues simply start the VM from the backup in minutes. Members of Flybe’s IT team rely on another capability in Veeam Backup & Replication: U-AIR™ (Universal Application-Item Recovery), which lets them recover individual objects from any virtualized application, without requiring agents. “We use U-AIR for Exchange e-mail restores,” James explained. “Before U-AIR, the whole database had to be staged to disk before it could be opened; then we retrieved individual items and restored them to a user’s mailbox. This took more than one workday to complete. With Veeam, it takes less than an hour.” James and his colleagues use another capability enabled by vPower. SureBackup™ lets them automatically test the recoverability of backups. “I review the logs every morning and see that applications were successfully booted and connectivity was established from the backup the night before,” he said. “It is very reassuring to know these backups are successful every day.”
The Results Full VM restores take minutes, without disrupting users “UK flight operator Flybe won the award for best vituralisation for disaster recovery project for its use of Veeam Backup and Replication v5.”
The Instant VM Recovery capability in Veeam Backup & Replication lets Flybe’s IT team restore an entire machine from a backup in minutes. From the time the team learned about a problem with a VM that runs an aircraft maintenance application until employees were able to access the application took mere minutes.
Individual objects from any virtualized application are recovered quickly The U-AIR capability in Veeam Backup & Replication comes in handy when Flybe’s IT team needs to recover e-mails for employees who accidentally delete them. Before Veeam was implemented, this process took more than one day. With Veeam, it takes minutes.
Backup speed doubles and backup window shrinks, enabling more frequent backups Veeam Backup & Replication performs VM backups twice as fast as Flybe’s previous backup tool. Since the backup window has shrunk significantly, the IT team performs more frequent backups on critical VMs.
About Veeam Software Veeam Software, an Elite VMware Technology Alliance Partner, develops innovative software to manage VMware vSphere®. Veeam Backup & Replication with vPower™ provides advanced Virtualization-Powered Data Protection™ and is the #1 VM backup solution. Veeam nworks extends enterprise monitoring to VMware and includes the Veeam nworks Management Pack™ for VMware management in Microsoft System Center and the Veeam nworks Smart Plug-in™ for VMware management in HP Operations Manager. Veeam ONE™ provides a single solution to optimize the performance, configuration and utilization of vSphere environments and includes: Veeam Monitor™ for easy-to-deploy VMware monitoring; Veeam Reporter™ for VMware capacity planning, change tracking and documentation; and Veeam Business View™ for VMware business service management and categorization. Learn more about Veeam Software by visiting www.veeam.com.
To learn more, visit: www.veeam.com © 2011 Veeam Software. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 10282011
