D Swim Academy Establishes Uninterrupted Data Protection for Seamless Operation with Synology

As Malaysia's leading swim academy, D Swim Academy(DSA) has experienced rapid growth in student numbers, resulting in a significant increase in operational data. Consequently, their original file server could no longer handle expanding demands. Since 2018, DSA's storage needs have grown each year, calling for a multi-functional, secure, and partitioned storage solution.

As the swim academy expanded into new locations and opened offices across Malaysia, the limitations of their previous file server became more evident. The traditional file server they have been using lacked both adequate data protection and scalability. Moreover, the high licensing costs for Active Directory have prompted them to seek a more cost-effective alternative. 

DSA has encountered downtime issues during peak hours, which have affected their operational efficiency. Additionally, the issue with limited inodes has caused ongoing problems with mail services. In response to these challenges, DSA began exploring alternative email hosting services aimed at enhancing storage performance under heavy usage.

Fortunately, DSA'’s IT team quickly identified its issue and promptly sought a comprehensive storage solution. Synology proved to be the ideal choice, meeting various needs within the IT infrastructure, including centralized storage, directory services, mail services, data protection, and, most importantly, ensuring uninterrupted business continuity.

The IT team deployed Synology's UC3200 as the primary storage server, centralizing data for smooth day-to-day virtual machine operations while offering scalable storage to accommodate future growth. Also, the UC3200's two controllers operate concurrently and can automatically take over in the event of a disaster, ensuring uninterrupted services.

The company also deployed Synology Directory Server by turning one of its NAS into a domain controller (DC) to manage employee domain policies.

To enhance data protection, the company implemented the 3-2-1 backup strategy using Synology's backup applications. Active Backup for Business backs up data from two virtual machines to the RS1219+, protecting critical data from 11 branches and ensuring uninterrupted business operations.

Furthermore, the IT team used Hyper Backup to create secondary backups of data from two RS3618xs servers to the RS1219+. To add an extra layer of protection, Hyper Backup also creates tertiary copies of this data on the RS422+.

With DSM, IT admins can easily manage and monitor all Active Backup for Business and Hyper Backup activities from a single interface. This minimizes the need for IT resources and maximizes backup efficiency. Also, the deduplication technology in Active Backup for Business has saved 69.5%, or 7.3 TB, of storage space on backups.

Additionally, a high-availability cluster was set up via Synology High Availability (SHA) within the Synology servers. This setup enables quick recovery with minimal Recovery Time Objective (RTO) by automatically failing over data and services to a passive server if the active server becomes unavailable. As a result, all 11 DSA branches now manage daily tasks, such as member logins and financial management, without any interruptions.

On top of that, DSA deployed Synology MailPlus and set up a private mail server to manage 60 user accounts and handle over 100,000 inodes. High availability was also configured between two mail servers to ensure continuous service. This setup provides seamless email tracking for DSA staff and guarantees that emails are always backed up.

With Synology's license-free solutions, such as Active Backup for Business and Hyper Backup, DSA has eliminated additional expenses required for backup services and saved time on software license management and renewals. Additionally, Synology High Availability (SHA) ensures uninterrupted access and online functionality for DSA's data and services, even during peak operational hours.