Vinchin shields Czech wholesale distributor from business interruption for stable full-service operations

Vinchin Backup & Recovery is a great XenServer backup solution with a reasonable price and stable performance. It has a clean interface, such strong functions as BitDetector, data deduplication, instant restore, etc. Really helps us out. The solution has proven itself to be an outstanding one for our daily operations.

Internal Systems Administrator

K&V Elektro

Business Challenge

Founded in 1991, K&V Elektro has developed a significant position (the top 5 most important distributors) in the industry of wholesale electrical installation materials and over time it reaches B2B e-shop, retail, warehouse, and road transport fields. The company now employs about 400 staff at 19 branches over 5,000 dispensing points in the Czech Republic and establishes 19,000 m² warehouses to store more than 30,000 stock items from 500 global manufacturers. 

As the leading company in distributing switches, sockets, light sources, luminaires, etc. amid the crises brought by COVID-19, emerging digital rivals, shifting consumer expectations, rising product and pricing transparency, and mounting efficiency pressure, K&V Elektro is embracing data-driven technologies and modern wholesale distribution systems. Soon these physical servers fell short of the expectation to be effective for there are too many to manage. The company then virtualized them on XenServer.

To stay ahead, the protection of a huge amount of data produced is a concern for the wholesaler. The old solution it used was good at backup, except for the mounting data and the recovery being a little time-wasting. Since the solution kept backing up data without excluding any, the data redundancy was saved in the storage space. Also, disaster recovery functions normally but fails to work faster.

“We would like a software with centralized management and a more intuitive way of displaying the statistics to better make the business decisions,” said the Internal Systems Administrator of the company.

Vinchin Solution

K&V Elektro searched online and found Vinchin Backup & Recovery on the first page. So, they dug for more information and asked for advice from counterparts. “Turns out it’s a XenServer backup solution known in the industry. We downloaded and tested the features critical to us right away. The solution has everything we need, a management console, a 3D visible data display with details, fast backup, and instant data restore. And a good price,” said the Internal Systems Administrator.

Vinchin Backup & Recovery identifies changed data fast each time through CBT (Changed Block Tracking) for incremental backups and excludes duplicated data blocks with data deduplication. Furthermore, K&V Elektro utilizes BitDetector, a technology that screens out unnecessary data blocks, for example, swap files, unpartitioned space, and partition gaps. By decreasing the total size of data that really needs protection, the company sees a significant efficiency improvement in the whole course of backup. The Administrator added, “The backup is staggeringly quick with the help of Vinchin solution due to the smaller amount of data and targeted backup measures.”

Faced with those myriad disruptive forces, the wholesaler, doubled as a retailer, attaches importance to data safety. Every step of the business operation includes mission-critical systems from vendor-managed inventory tools (VMI), order tracking, and customer service to transport and other business processes. The company cannot afford to be interrupted in business. Vinchin Backup & Recovery prepares instant recovery to restore any virtual machine that goes wrong from any backups in seconds. The entire procedure minimizes delays to core operations caused by system or hardware failure without affecting the original backup data.

Result

Vinchin Backup & Recovery cuts backup short for K&V Elektro with CBT, and data reduction technologies like deduplication, compression, and BitDetector. It also offers instant recovery for the company to proceed with business steadily in case of unexpected accidents. “The software provides agile, trustworthy XenServer backup solutions. Those functions are easy, fast, and powerful. The instant restore process is seamless and the management is effortless because of the console. It’s indeed the simplest yet the most productive backup tool for us,” said the Administrator.