Business Challenge

The IT infrastructure at Bartle & Gibson is fully virtualized. “About a half of our VMs are virtual desktops that we access using Sunray terminals – for areas too dusty or otherwise hazardous for PCs,” says Jonathan Bowerman, IT Specialist at Bartle & Gibson. “The other half are critical business servers, such as our mail and internal message servers, our payroll server, our document management server, and so on.”

In terms of data protection, Bartle & Gibson requires both operational recovery and disaster recovery for their VMware VMs: “We needed to have both an offline backup and a standby replica for our critical servers since users can’t wait for hours for the mail server to recover and we also needed a way to recover from a catastrophic VM host loss,” says Jonathan.

Bartle & Gibson’s previous VM data protection solution worked … in theory. “In actuality, it barely worked,” says Jonathan. “It was slow, error prone, picky, and unreliable. We had to find a replacement that wouldn’t take away our time and enable us to restore IT services quickly.”

Solution

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is an all-in-one solution, which enables creating VM backups for fast operational recovery, as well as VM replicas – for near-instant disaster recovery. “The reviews online were positive, the price was excellent compared to any non-free VM backup, and the support staff was helpful in answering my questions,” says Jonathan.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication backs up entire VMware VMs and stores them in compressed and deduplicated form to save storage space. VM replicas created by the product are regular VMware VMs which are synced with source VMs on schedule or ad hoc.

In addition to all-in-one capabilities of NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Jonathan also appreciates the wide variety of options available in the product for data recovery:

• Instant VM Recovery: Individual VMs can be instantly run (booted) directly from compressed and deduplicated VM backups. This way recovery can be performed within seconds, without waiting for full restore from backup files.

• Instant Object Recovery: Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Active Directory objects can be instantly browsed, searched, and recovered directly from compressed and deduplicated VM backups, right in the product’s Web interface.

• Instant File Recovery: Individual files and folders of both Windows-based and Linux-based VMs can be instantly browsed, searched, and recovered directly from compressed and deduplicated VM backups.

• Instant Disaster Recovery: Because VM replicas are regular VMware VMs, they can be simply powered on to provide an instant disaster recovery.

Results

NAKIVO Backup & Replication now protects the virtual environment at Bartle & Gibson. VM backups enable fast operational recovery, while replicas of the critical VMs enable near-instant disaster recovery. “The multiple layers of recovery allowed us to begin using a document management server and recycle old paper instead of storing it in our warehouse for years!” says Jonathan. “In wholesale time is money and space is also money! Over the last couple years, the amount of space we’ve saved by having a reliable (and properly backed up) electronic document management solution is easily enough for tens of thousands of dollars of products. The time me and my team personally saved is easily in the tens of hours per month. Note that this is tens of hours (from our users’ perspective) of downtime, unavailable IT support, and us fighting with strange and esoteric recovery, or worse having to start from scratch due to an invalid backup that we were not warned about. With NAKIVO Screenshot Verification we know our backups are ready to go and easily bootable.”

Company Profile

Now Western Canada’s premier plumbing, heating, and electrical distributor, Bartle & Gibson was founded by two Canadian businessmen who wanted to focus on relationships with customers and suppliers. In 1944 Charlie Bartle of Victoria, BC, and Cecil Gibson of Vancouver, BC, each started a store in their respective city, and Bartle & Gibson opened its doors for the first time.

1951 marked the company’s first expansion, with a branch opening in Edmonton, Alberta. Over the next 20 years, Charlie and Cecil would see their business expand to cover most of Western Canada, including Calgary, Yellowknife, and Surrey. A service expansion in 1983 added electrical products to the distribution portfolio.

Bartle & Gibson now provides more than a wholesale distribution of plumbing, heating, and electrical supplies. From their front line staff through to the president of the company, Bartle & Gibson continually provides exceptional service to all customers, suppliers, and vendors.

Today Bartle & Gibson consists of 31 branches spread throughout Western Canada that are supplied by 3 main distribution points. Their continued growth and expansion are due in no small part to their dedication to provide exceptional service to all clients, suppliers, and employees. Bartle & Gibson continues to be the privately owned, 100% Canadian organization that customers have come to trust since 1944. For more information, visit www.bartlegibson.com.