Cohesity Serves Up Data Reduction and Lower TCO
At a Glance
Cohesity backs up the entire production environment for Wendy’s, including 1PB of data, approximately 850 Linux and Windows servers, and over 700 VMs.
Challenges
The biggest complaint from IT was burdensome complexity within their legacy backup infrastructure. After a primary storage failure, it took the IT team over a week to recover data using Commvault and Veeam, demonstrating a better solution was urgently required.
Solution
Right off the bat, backup times reduced from 12 hours to two, and Wendy’s deployed DataPlatform, DataProtect and CloudSpin across the enterprise. Cohesity provides a modern backup and recovery solution, in addition to solidifying its disaster recovery plan.
Results
Wendy’s has seen 18x in data reduction and with a raw capacity of 300TB, Cohesity is now backing up 171TB after deduplication and compression. Wendy’s has freed up staff resources, gaining more than 15 hours per week and eliminating a dedicated staff person for troubleshooting.
Overview
Wendy’s was founded in 1969 by Dave Thomas in Columbus, Ohio. Dave built his business on the premise, “Quality is our Recipe”, which remains the guidepost of the Wendy’s system. Wendy’s is best known for its made-to-order square hamburgers, using fresh, never frozen beef, freshly-prepared salads with hand-chopped lettuce, and other signature items like chili, baked potatoes and the Frosty dessert. The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ: WEN) is committed to doing the right thing and making a positive difference in the lives of others.
Challenges
Wendy’s manages two datacenter locations, an on-premises site located in its Dublin, Ohio headquarters and a COLO in Atlanta, Georgia. The corporate IT team manages approximately 1PB of data, with data growing at about 10 percent per year, with many applications and workloads shifting to the cloud. The environment at Wendy’s is about 90 percent virtual with approximately 1000 VMs, and the remaining 10 percent of physical infrastructure will gradually reduce.
The biggest complaint from IT was burdensome complexity within their legacy backup infrastructure. Wendy’s used a variety of providers including Commvault, EqualLogic, NetApp and Veeam, and it took a dedicated IT staff person to solely manage troubleshooting for the growing complications and issues with backup and recovery. After a primary storage failure several years ago, it took the IT team over a week to recover data using Commvault and Veeam, demonstrating a better solution was urgently required.
Wendy’s needed to identify and implement a modern backup solution that actually could expedite recovery to meet evolving business requirements.
Wendy’s aimed for the following capabilities in its next backup solution:
- Enterprise-class backup and recovery with outstanding performance and lower TCO
- Simplified management and administration for a hybrid environment
- Ability for seamless integration to the cloud, including native integration with AWS and Microsoft Azure
- Scalable, modern solution with ability for disaster recovery in the cloud
Solution
IT modernization efforts at Wendy’s started with first deploying Nutanix hyperconverged platform for primary workloads, beginning with implementation in its VDI environment and adding approximately 100TB and 18 nodes. The company wanted to move away from ‘big iron storage’ and simplify overall management and administration. It looked to do the same for its backup and recovery environment going forward. The IT team at Wendy’s worked with MSP Computacenter (formerly FusionStorm), on an extensive, three-month long Proof of Concept (PoC) to evaluate several solutions including Cohesity.
Right off the bat with Cohesity, backup times reduced from 12 hours to two, and after a continued successful PoC, Wendy’s deployed Cohesity across its entire IT environment. Wendy’s is now using Cohesity DataPlatform, DataProtect and CloudSpin, to provide a modern backup and recovery solution, in addition to solidifying its disaster recovery approach.
Cohesity is the future of backup and recovery in the enterprise. We are pleased Cohesity lived up to our expectations and delivered a next-generation backup and recovery solution for Wendy’s, ensuring the solution is scalable and set up for future growth as we expand more operations and test/dev to the cloud. Cohesity listens and responds to customers’ needs, made backup and recovery simple, and the benefits were so compelling the solution sold itself. Hands down, Cohesity delivers outstanding performance.”
– Don Murawski, Manager, Servers and Storage
Results
In the last several years, Wendy’s has migrated from its legacy environment, now deploying Nutanix for primary workloads and Cohesity for backup and recovery. Cohesity backs up the entire production environment for Wendy’s, including 1PB of data, approximately 850 Linux and Windows servers, and over 700 VMs. The company replicates data to its Atlanta-based COLO site, and while the company is still in the process of migrating some Oracle and SQL databases off of Commvault, Cohesity is the backup target across its entire corporate infrastructure.
With Cohesity, Wendy’s manages all backup data from a single pane of glass, and administration and management are greatly simplified. Installation took literally a matter of minutes, and having a solution that is quick to production was a huge benefit. Cohesity has allowed Wendy’s to free up staff resources, gaining more than 15 hours per week for staff and eliminating a dedicated staff person for troubleshooting. A dedicated expert administrator is not imperative to manage the platform, and the ease of use was a huge benefit for a nimble IT team that can essentially set and forget the Cohesity platform.
Another key benefit for Wendy’s is the native auto-protect features built in to the Cohesity platform, with tight integration with VMware vSphere. When the IT team adds a new VM, it is auto-discovered and included under the same assigned protection policies automatically. Additionally, Wendy’s can now use Cohesity to restore VMs since vMotion was not a possibility in its current environment. With Cohesity, VMs can migrate from an isolated environment to a different network and vCenter in a production HCI network, saving hours of potential downtime.
Already the company has seen a drastic reduction in backup and recovery times, and great results from deduplication and compression. Wendy’s has seen 18x in storage reduction and with a raw capacity of 300TB, Cohesity is now backing up 171TB after deduplication and compression.
With a solid backup and recovery solution in place, Wendy’s can now finalize its recovery plan and meet recovery SLAs. “Before Cohesity, there were some gaps in our disaster recovery plan. Now we can spin up data in Cohesity with a few simple clicks, and have the resources to restore local backups. Cohesity’s instant mass restore has eliminated roadblocks we had with previous legacy infrastructure, and this has transformed operations at Wendy’s,” states Murawski.
In the next phase of implementation, Wendy’s will use Cohesity CloudSpin to expand to the cloud. Critical workloads from approximately 50 VMs will likely move to Azure, and the company will consider test/dev in the cloud. With a hybrid model across all IT infrastructure, Cohesity’s flexible platform will enable Wendy’s to back up on-premises, at its COLO site, or to AWS or Azure in the cloud.
Wendy’s realized many benefits with Cohesity including:
- Reduced staff time previously dedicated to troubleshooting by 15 hours per week
- Backup times reduced from 12 hours to two
- Cohesity’s auto-protect technology reduces complexity and cost
- CapEx savings of more than $60K per year