French catering company discovers the recipe for faster backups: HYCU
Business Challenge
To run its operations efficiently, the MRS Groupe relies heavily on its information systems. Continued growth requires that the company employ solutions that are agile, while ensuring that critical applications and data are continuously available. With just two people comprising the MRS Groupe IT team, those systems must also be very easy to manage.
“We chose to go with a 100% Nutanix environment because it enables us to evolve rapidly and efficiently, allowing us to compete effectively with other companies that have more resources and larger IT teams,” says Lias Kemache, Director of Information Systems for MRS Groupe.
For backup and recovery, MRS Groupe was using PHD virtual backup software with Citrix XenServer and XenApp in a standard server/NAS/disk array architecture. But overnight backups were taking too long, extending into the next work day.
With the advent of the new hyper-converged system, Lias Kemache wanted a backup and recovery solution that would fully leverage the advantages of Nutanix—including its speed, efficiency and ease of use. With help from Nutanix partner, S-CUBE, and support from David Golinski and Stéphane Stéphane Lefèvre, Lias Kemache worked to find the right solution.
He trialed Vembu, but was having issues with backing up VMs with older versions of Windows.
That’s when he discovered HYCU.
Solution
As the only backup and recovery solution purpose-built for Nutanix, HYCU ticked all the boxes for MRS Groupe.
“HYCU is very simple to manage, the most competitive solution from a financial point of view and the ideal technological partner for Nutanix,” Lias Kemache explains, noting that HYCU’s native Nutanix integration was a key factor in the decision.
HYCU was deployed to provide bi-directional backups between MRS Groupe’s headquarters and data center of the company’s 80 Windows servers running a variety of applications—including web, ERP, MS Office, and custom applications developed in-house. This includes full, incremental and ROBO (remote office back office) backups.
Now that HYCU has been in use for more than six months, Lias Kemache says he could not be happier with his choice: “I am totally satisfied with HYCU.”
Benefits
Speed
HYCU has completely solved MRS Groupe’s problem with long backup windows. “The backup speed is stunning,” Lias Kemache says, noting that file server backups went from 36 hours to just 2 hours. Restoration from snapshots is very fast as well to just minutes.
Simplicity
HYCU’s native integration with Nutanix make deployment a breeze—installation takes just minutes. “The process of setting up and using HYCU is shockingly simple,” Lias Kemache says. “The integration of Nutanix and HYCU is so natural that we feel like we have a single solution editor for the whole thing. Once the installation and setup is done there is not much to do except check email alerts to make sure the backups are done correctly.”
Support
Lias Kemache says the support he has received from HYCU has been stellar. “They have been extremely responsive and friendly,” he notes.”
About the customer
The MRS Groupe is a collective catering company providing high-quality catering services to corporate offices, cafeterias, hospitals, and restaurants across France. With more than 1,000 employees, the company manages more than 130 facilities.
To learn how HYCU can help your Nutanix, Azure or Google Cloud Platform backup strategy, visit www.hycu.com or email info@hycu.com.
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