Business Challenge

Columbia Nephrology consists of a group of cutting-edge healthcare providers, who are dedicated to delivering high quality care to patients. Columbia Nephrology has 5 locations, 21 physicians, and 24+ affiliations. All physicians are widely considered to be experts on kidney conditions throughout the greater Columbia area, South Carolina. Physicians visit patients, provide dialysis, train medical residents, and provide consulting to staff.

Columbia Nephrology has three main locations and two satellite locations across the Midlands of South Carolina. All servers are virtualized, and there are currently 40 virtual machines. These machines consist of Microsoft Active Directory servers, domain controllers, proxy servers, and other servers. The practice’s most critical data is an electronic health records system and a practice management software that contain all patient’s information. The ability to care for the patients is crucial, and having a stable backup system is key. Having reliable backups, a stable replication process, and fast recoveries allows physicians to care for their patients without any interruptions. In the event of a disaster, knowing that all data can be recovered in a matter of minutes is essential for the patient care.

Previously, Columbia Nephrology relied on another solution for protecting their critical data, but the solution was not meeting the practice’s needs. Often, backup jobs would fail for different reasons, and backups could hang for a long time. More time was spent on troubleshooting failed backup jobs than on basic maintenance of the backup jobs. This caused frustration among the IT team and prevented them from getting their other daily tasks done. Larger backups also took several hours to recover, and this caused workflow issues that the practice could not tolerate. Some of the features were not needed and were wasted in the practice’s environment. The practice started to look at other solutions, but the pricing models did not always fit their needs. The main criteria were a cost-effective and easy-to-use backup solution that delivered on its promises.

Solution

After researching several backup solutions and viewing numerous demos, Columbia Nephrology decided that NAKIVO Backup & Replication was exactly what they needed. The simple workflow of scheduling a backup, the ability to select a storage device, and a fair pricing model made NAKIVO Backup & Replication the best option for the practice. NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides data protection for virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS environments. The solution also offers flexibility in terms of installation and configuration, with installation on Windows/Linux, deployment as a pre-configured virtual appliance, or installation on a NAS server.

“The installation process is extremely straightforward, as it took us only a minute to configure the software with Active Directory. The web-interface is laid out in a user-friendly way, and the dashboard gives a complete overview of the backup environment from completed backup jobs to backup speeds and data size transfers. Currently, we are using Data Domain storage for our backups with NAKIVO Backup & Replication. Later this year, we will also be installing NAKIVO Backup & Replication on a QNAP NAS,” says Ray Gilliam.

“We only back up our VMs and perform full and incremental backups every night for our entire infrastructure. The whole process gets completed in nearly eight hours. Once the backup jobs are created and scheduled, we seldomly ever have to reconfigure them. This makes administration easier, allowing us to have more time to spend on other IT tasks, rather than on verifying backups and resolving alerts. Fortunately, we’ve not had to request support so far, as we did not have any major issues,” says Ray.

“The best functionality for us are the alarm alerts in the job information box. If issues with the backups occur, NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides additional information in the alerts that makes it easy for us to resolve those minor alerts. The knowledge base that we receive is clear, so we understand the issue and how to resolve that issue,” says Ray.

Columbia Nephrology also enjoys that NAKIVO Backup & Replication integrates with Active Directory. “Active Directory integration is an obvious time saver, not having to remember additional usernames and passwords is always a good thing. Overall, due to how easily NAKIVO Backup & Replication schedules backups and verifies backups, we see the product a keeper for the foreseeable future,” says Ray.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows Columbia Nephrology to schedule backup jobs and verify backups easily. The practice can back up their infrastructure with full and incremental backups and no longer has to deal with failed backup jobs. The IT team now has more time to devote to other pressing issues rather than constantly monitor the solution. Due to alerts and the information in the alerts, the practice can easily resolve minor issues in the backup jobs, if they occur. “NAKIVO Backup & Replication is about half the price of our previous solution, and about a fraction of the cost if you compare to the other solutions on the market. Thus, NAKIVO Backup & Replication saved us thousands on renewal cost alone. Pricing and the product’s ability to integrate with almost any storage system is the most appealing aspect about NAKIVO Backup & Replication,” says Ray.

About Columbia Nephrology

As the Midlands area’s largest nephrology practice, Columbia Nephrology is the place to come for comprehensive, convenient treatment plans delivered by specialists. Other medical practitioners turn to their active research center when they want to learn the latest innovations in kidney disease diagnosis and care. Columbia Nephrology offers training programs certified by the American Society of Diagnostic and Interventional Nephrology, and all their physicians are affiliated with the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. For more information, visit www.columbianephorology.com.