[Advertorial] How do you ensure reliable backups when you work with 90 ships, 20 offices and many large projects? Jan De Nul was looking for a solution, Synology was the solution.

Jan De Nul has a fleet of 90 vessels, including 45 large and 45 small vessels, 20 offices and, depending on the number of active projects, around 64 temporary berths. Their vessels have satellite connections, but external backup is impractical due to high latency and low bandwidth. On-ship backup was the only viable solution.

Their original solution was to create backups on tapes that had to be swapped out daily by the crew. They also had a data sync pipeline, but that wasn’t a true backup solution. They wanted to simplify their backup infrastructure into a unified solution that could be deployed across all their assets. Supporting high availability was essential so that data could be mirrored and protected from hardware failures. On ships, they also need to be portable enough to not be tied to the production environment. Then, if something happens to that part of the ship, the backups remain intact.

In an age where data is information, information is knowledge, and knowledge translates into progress, losing data is unacceptable. By using Synology, we can rest easy knowing that our RackStations are stable, easy to use, serve multiple purposes, and create reliable backups.

David De Boom – ICT Team Leader at Jan De Nul

The solution

Since most of the IT team was already using Synology devices, it was only natural that they first turned to Synology for a solution.

Since the number of temporary docking sites fluctuates throughout the year, they decided to create a box solution using templates of Synology units that can be prepared in advance and deployed when a new site opens, or moved when an existing site closes. In the end, they use this box system for all assets because it proves to be very effective. Standardizing and simplifying the backup infrastructure later helped with data management and troubleshooting.

Each box contains two Synology RackStation RS818+ (and later RS820+) units combined into a high-availability cluster with Synology High Availability (SHA). SHA creates an active-passive high-availability cluster based on two devices. One device becomes the active server and processes all data requests, while the other device remains in standby mode, passively synchronizing with the active unit and ready to take over at any time. The compact 1U RS818+ and RS820+ units are designed for powerful data management.

There were two boxes on each large ship and one box on each of their small ships, offices and temporary berths. In total, there were 438 RackStation units backing up more than 700 TB of critical business data. On large ships, one SHA cluster is used to back up VMware VMs, while the other hosts a shared folder containing the software required by the engineering department (TD) and backing up PLC devices that monitor and control critical parts of the ship.

On small vessels, offices, and temporary docks, the single SHA cluster protects your VMware VMs so data is always accessible and recoverable.

Jan De Nul has also successfully deployed Synology Drive on a number of ships, both large and small, to sync and share files. With Synology Drive, both ships can now automatically sync data when they are within range of each other’s wireless networks. In the past, connections between ships were unstable and slow, posing a threat to data integrity. Although this was just a pilot program, plans are already underway for a more widespread rollout across multiple ships.

Thanks to the reliability and cost-effectiveness of Synology devices, Jan De Nul now runs Synology backup solutions for all of its assets at more than 120 locations.

This is a commercial post in collaboration with Synology. For more information about their storage products, please click here.