Case Study
Milhaus is a mixed-use housing developer based in Indianapolis, Ind., that designs, builds and manages luxury apartments in urban areas. One of the fastest growing companies in Indianapolis, Milhaus recently rebuilt its IT infrastructure to better facilitate business growth and was looking to protect critical business services to prevent a major business interruption.
To meet its business objectives, Milhaus started researching disaster recovery solutions and providers. According to Steve Werner, Director of Technology at Milhaus, they wanted a local provider who could reduce their recovery point objective from a week to less than 24 hours. They were also looking for a strategic IT partner in which they could expand or move their production to in the future.
Milhaus decided to use OTAVA’s Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution. OT DRaaS protects data by capturing every write-to-disk at the hypervisor level, without agents on the machine. This means no added threat to the security of any data, regardless of whether it’s in transit or at rest. Critical systems can be restored in minutes, and OT DRaaS provides a three-click failover in the event of a disaster.
According to Werner, Milhaus chose OTAVA’s solution not just for the simplicity of the technology. The company also wanted a provider that could architect a complete solution that met or exceeded their RPO requirement, as well as the technical expertise to implement it. OTAVA’s geographical diversity and an easy-to-use portal were also key considerations in their decision.
The combination of OTAVA’s experience and expertise with Zerto has been great for Werner. “I just have a few clicks of a button, and I can access my server and get it up and running,” he said. “It’s hard for a lot of other providers to say, ‘We’ll get your servers back in an hour.’ Zerto and OTAVA can do that.” In fact, with OT DRaaS, Milhaus’ recovery servers can be spun up as fast as their internal production servers.
Milhaus completed a successful failover test on Dec. 10, 2016. “We wanted it to be quick and easy,” Werner said. “It’s almost hard to believe how quick it works.”
There were some technical hurdles during the replication, but OTAVA and Zerto’s world-class support was there every step of the way and helped with any questions or concerns Milhaus had. “We look forward to doing another test mid-year and again at the end of the year,” Werner said.
With their deployment of OTAVA’s OT DRaaS, Milhaus reached a major business goal. Critical services such as telecommunications and accounting systems can quickly and easily be restored. Werner is confident Milhaus has mitigated the risk from ransomware, malware or anything that could shut down the network. They can now fail over and back from a hypervisor environment to VMware—something he’s found that no other provider can offer.
