We recently visited St. Nikolaus-Hospital in Eupen, Belgium, where we filmed a video with Synology about the hospital’s transition to the Synology ActiveProtect DP7400 appliance for securing and safeguarding data. The two IT staff members featured in the video explain why they chose Synology.
Until recently, creating backups and keeping the hospital’s data secure was quite a cumbersome and costly process. St. Nikolaus-Hospital used a combination of Veeam and Wasabi to achieve this, according to Pascal de Sélys and Cyriel Bovy. They two work in the hospital’s IT department. They are responsible, among other things, for ensuring that its data is and remains secure. However, that combination came with significant costs and wasn’t particularly streamlined.
First, the numbers: St. Nikolaus-Hospital manages approximately 117 TB of backup capacity to protect around 160 VMs and about 800 users. The combination of vendors the hospital previously used to handle this entailed significant annual recurring license costs. Additionally, the combination of Veeam and Wasabi also resulted in considerable costs for the IT department itself in terms of management and related tasks.
Much higher ROI
In our view, the most significant outcome of St. Nikolaus-Hospital’s switch to a Synology ActiveProtect Appliance is undoubtedly the ROI reported by the hospital. De Sélys and Bovy expect a 238 percent increase in ROI over the next five years. That’s a huge difference from how things were previously. By choosing Synology’s ActiveProtect Appliance, the hospital’s licensing costs are eliminated from the equation. Of course, there is the purchase price for the Synology hardware. However, spread out over the coming years, the hospital will more than recoup this investment.
3-2-1-1-0
All in all, the use of Synology equipment provides St. Nikolaus-Hospital with a complete 3-2-1-1-0 backup strategy. Not too long ago, the 3-2-1 strategy was recommended. This meant that 3 copies of the data must be available, 2 of which must be stored on different storage media. At least 1 backup must be stored offsite or in the cloud. Since then, a few more numbers have been added. Now, at least 1 immutable copy of the data must also be created. Organizations must ensure that they verify and test their backups. In other words, there must be zero errors in the backups. With Synology ActiveProtect Appliances such as the DP7400, this is possible.
We mentioned this briefly above, but by choosing Synology equipment, St. Nikolaus-Hospital has also addressed immutability. In addition, it offers air-gapping capabilities. Furthermore, according to the staff at St. Nikolaus-Hospital, the hospital is GDPR-compliant and receives Microsoft 365 backups at no extra cost upon purchasing the Synology ActiveProtect DP7400 Appliance. It has also managed to set up a DR site at another hospital, St. Vith Hospital.
Finally, it is also important to note that, according to De Sélys and Bovy, the entire system is much easier to manage now. With this, St. Nikolaus-Hospital is modernizing its entire data protection process (backups, disaster recovery). It should be set up for many years to come.
Below you can watch the video we created together with Synology:
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