Twelve VMware ESX servers and 300 virtual machines backed up from a single central point with Time Navigator for VMware

Atempo, Inc., a leading provider of cross-platform data protection and archiving solutions, today announced that French financial institution Crédit Mutuel has chosen Time Navigator for VMware to protect its ESX server farms.

The entities of Credit Mutuel de Bretagne, Ocean and Anjou offer a complete range of products and services for the banking and insurance industries. They have pooled their resources under the joint IT department of Crédit Mutuel (GICM- Groupement Informatique du Crédit Mutuel). GICM provides a complete high performance and independent banking IT platform that can be used to implement any strategy that the GICM requires while offering joint IT services that enhances the creation and innovation of the services offered to customers.

To help fulfill its mission, GICM decided to optimize its current resources by virtualizing part of its servers. They bought 12 ESX servers from VMware, each hosting 25 virtual servers, for a total of 300 virtual machines. The equipment is being implemented in three distinct server farms.

“We use VMotion, which enables us to move data in real-time across virtual machines installed on physical servers without any downtime,” said Pierre Le Guével, Storage Administrator at GICM. “We can also use the virtual machines attached to a SAN to move data from one server farm to another.”

In addition to meeting hardware resource optimization and business continuity requirements, this new distributed computing architecture had to fit into the existing data protection architecture. After a thorough review of available solutions, GICM chose Atempo Time Navigator for VMware as their backup solution. This module met all the required criteria, specifically because it backs up all of the servers spread over the three farms, even when VMotion is activated.

“With Atempo, we were certain that all our servers were going to be backed up, even if virtual servers are automatically moved with VMotion from one farm to another,” said Le Guevel. “We also had the insurance to restart without any data loss, even in the event of major failure. This is crucial in our business.” Moreover, Time Navigator for VMware module fits transparently within the architecture. “ESX servers are automatically detected,” adds Le Guevel. It is therefore easy to apply a backup policy for every protected equipment.

“Time Navigator for VMware’s ease of installation, management and use convinced us that it was clearly the right choice,” said Le Guével. “This module enables us to perform not only a full backup of all ESX servers but also to restore all our servers to their original state. Moreover, the latter operation is very easy to perform thanks to the intuitive graphical user interface and the Time Navigation. Teams in charge of restoring data are different from the ones setting up the backup, therefore restore graphical interface had to be very simple and intuitive.”

“Many companies like Crédit Mutuel de Bretagne take advantage of VMware to create a virtual infrastructure which enables them to better use IT resources and increase flexibility,” said Stéphane Kirchacker, Sales Director, Atempo France. “In turn, they must have a backup and restore solution that is both reliable and flexible in this virtual environment. Time Navigator for VMware offers robust data protection with high performances and scalable for the ESX VMware servers.”

About Atempo

Atempo allows companies and organizations around the world to preserve vital intellectual property and digital information, and to access that information at any time with extraordinary reliability. Digital assets are now the life blood of any business and reliable data protection and archiving solutions must be implemented in order to preserve these assets. From large, centralized data centers and distributed enterprises to small remote offices, Atempo provides highly-scalable backup and recovery, archiving and security solutions for Windows, Mac, Linux, UNIX, iSeries and all major databases and applications. For real-time data protection of laptops and desktops, Atempo’s award-winning continuous data protection technology captures changes as they occur, allowing information to be recovered up to the moment of data loss or hardware failure. Atempo has more than 3,000 customers worldwide, with a sales and support network of global resellers. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., and has operations in Europe and Asia. Learn more about Atempo at: www.atempo.com.