Now, the initial setup is simple. Years ago, when we first started, it wasn't simple.

I installed an appliance yesterday and had it installed within an hour. From the box to the customer's site, it was installed and ready for the next stage. Then, one of the implementation guys from Infrascale gave me a call, and we liaised with each other because they like us to set it up. 

They tell me what they would like me to do. Now, the setup is much easier than it was when I very first had an appliance. It seemed to take forever when I first had an appliance. However, yesterday when I did it, it took no longer than an hour.

Because I have implemented these a few times now, I have a bit of knowledge based on some of the things that you come up against when it comes to making it all work exactly the way you want. There were things yesterday that I knew we should check to make sure it was working, because a couple of the backups failed to start. I actually told the guy at the other end, "Let's try this." So, we tried something and made it work because of the knowledge that I have built up. It is a lot easier than what it used to be, because it used to be difficult. Now, out-of-the-box, it is fairly easy.

When we install a hardware server, we build that hardware server with virtual machines on it. The hardware physical server would be clustered at the host with Hyper-V installed on it. Then, we would build the virtual machines on it, and those virtual machines are essentially the servers that are onsite. For customers of a certain size, we wouldn't suggest this because it is quite expensive for our customers per month. It is a fairly expensive product. However, for customers of a certain turnover, we would suggest this. We would explain to them in full what the disaster recovery solution offers. What we say to our customer is, "Our backup strategy would be to backup between two and three times a day, which would be before business starts, as business ends, and during business hours." So, any one of those would be bootable and the files are recoverable from three sections of each day. So, that is our backup strategy, which is really based on the appliance. 

The initial implementation process is straightforward. As soon as the appliance is added to the dashboard, I can configure anything related to the appliance through it, such as backups, retention, et cetera. All that type of configuration can be done remotely.

On average, it takes an hour to an hour and a half to deploy and configure the appliance. We try to understand the client's environment beforehand so that we can really dive in as soon as the appliance arrives on-site.

It's a pretty straightforward process to get set up and running. Their team supported us through the first couple of deployments and we're able to get them going pretty quickly now.

The deployment we use is an on-premises appliance and then we also have the cloud appliance on the backend.

During the initial setup, you plug in the appliance and then there's a Hyper-V agent that gets installed on our Hyper-V host. It pulls in our VMs and starts backing them up. The deployment time is really not bad at all. We can get an entire site backed up and deployed and done in a day. This includes having it fully backed up in the cloud, in most cases.

It is relatively straightforward to set up. We had some hiccups, not with the on-prem part but more related to scheduling the replication to the cloud. The deployment didn't take too long, though; about two weeks. A lot of that was just fine-tuning.

And in terms of maintenance, one person can easily take care of it.

The implementation is straightforward. 

When it comes to centralized deployment and configuration of the solution, the Infrascale Dashboard is very good. It definitely helps to be able to centrally manage all the deployed appliances in DRaaS systems.

Deployment can range from a day to a couple of days.

It was easy to set up. I had good people to help out in the beginning with me to get set up. And after that, it went pretty smoothly. I had no problems.

The Infrascale guys helped out a lot in the beginning. They got me set up and that was it. Away I went and no problem. Not a hassle. I've also been using IT for a long time, so that could help. They were really helpful. It was not a problem to get hold of them.

They had me set up in days, I believe. It wasn't very long. Infrascale had been set up with the platform on the backend with the server and the host and everything and got me set up with my dashboard. And from there, that was maybe a couple of days. They trained me one day for a few hours, I think an hour or two and that's it. They answered any questions and away it went. So from there on, it was just me deploying to my clients, which is totally different.

In terms of the deployment strategy, I was on a cloud backup that was expiring. We do preventative, proactive maintenance on all our clients. Depending on what kind of schedule they're on, either they're on a two-week, weekly, monthly, or three months. So, as their schedule came around, we actually transferred or migrated them over to the new cloud backup solution, eliminated the old one, and away we went. We manage all our clients and everybody has basic lines that they take care of and everybody knew that this was on the agenda. As they send out their weekly notes to the managers on the site when they said they're going to do the work, it was in the scope of work for that week of maintenance and away they went and did the job and that's it. 

The initial setup was very straightforward. I did my whole configuration in less than 30 minutes. That covered the base install, what I'm backing up, who it applies to, and what the general rules are for the backup. Picking the who, what, when, and where took about 30 minutes. Then the actual deployment took maybe 10 minutes per machine, if that. I set up 15 to 20 machines.

The Infrascale Dashboard is pretty and it works when it comes to centralized deployment and configuration of the solution. It's like driving a car. Most of the steering wheels are round. Most of the interfaces are cookie-cutter. They're all the same these days. They have what you need to do and you smash the buttons and you go. I didn't find anything missing or lacking.

My implementation strategy was to make sure I hit my managers, my servers, and my remote workers; to get those things covered. Anybody who is important, I put them on it. We're a small hospital, we've got 10 beds and 100 employees. I do run a couple of other backups on my servers and snuck this one in there as a tertiary. The more backups the better.

I'm a one-man IT shop. I do everything. I manage all vendor relationships that affect computers, our medical machines, and our firewalls, among other things, in any way. But Infrascale is a fire-and-forget solution. That's why I like it. I set it up and I walked away.

The initial setup is straightforward and they made onboarding really easy. When we engaged with them, there was a great deal of time spent going over the existing fleet that we were migrating to them, and a deployment plan was created.

We worked out which we were doing first and then second and third, and so on. Deployment was done in phases. So, we never really bit off more than we could chew. There were progress updates and I thought that things were very well coordinated. Also, the onboarding tech that was assigned to us knew the product very well. 

We have on-premises machines that replicate to Infrascale's cloud and we onboarded approximately 60 customers to them. These clients were all geographically and vertically distinct and as I recall, it took between six and nine months to complete the deployment for all of them.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The aspect that was a challenge, initially, was the sizing exercise. The sizing has improved since I first used it, but I feel that some technical people might not really understand some of the questions that are being asked and, therefore, may answer them incorrectly. And that could lead to incorrect sizing. That process could always be improved and streamlined.

Other than that, implementation has been straightforward, from the booking of the implementation, receiving of the appliance, and then working with the technicians on the provisioning. That was fine. All of those steps have been good experiences.

I have done several deployments of Infrascale for clients, and overall, they have taken about three man-hours, maximum. That time has been spread over a number of days, but that's primarily based on my availability and the technician's availability.

The initial setup was straightforward and we received support from the manufacturer.

This solution is simple to set up.