Case Study: South Africa Institute of Aquatic Biodiversity achieves seamless, secure remote file access and simplified IT management with Synology Inc.

South Africa Institute of Aquatic Biodiversity - Customer Case Study

The South Africa Institute of Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), a national research facility in Grahamstown, needed a simple, secure way to manage roughly 500 TB of production and backup data for about 100 users while being supported by a single IT administrator. Existing Windows file servers plus Google Drive were either fragmented or lacked native file-server access, so SAIAB turned to Synology Inc., which recommended a clustered NAS deployment (RS3617xs+ ×3 and RS18016xs+ ×2 + RX1216sas ×2) using Synology Drive, Virtual Machine Manager and Synology Office to meet their needs.

Synology Inc. implemented an on‑premises, scalable NAS solution with Active Directory integration, Synology Drive for mapped drives, sync clients, web and mobile access, Snapshot Replication and built‑in backup/restore. The deployment gave staff consistent, up‑to‑date access across devices (including remote access without VPN), simplified administration and disaster recovery, and maximised data availability for ~100 users and ~500 TB of data — all with reduced training and no subscription fees.

South Africa Institute of Aquatic Biodiversity

Andrew Grant

Information Technology Systems Administrator