Dar Overcomes Data Replication Challenges to Accelerate Sustainable Architecture and Development

Dar is one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary engineering consulting organizations, offering design, planning, engineering, sustainability consulting, digital solutions and services, and project management for buildings, cities, transportation, civil infrastructure, and environmental studies.

Since its founding in 1956, Dar has provided consultancy services to more than 950 clients in 60 countries and has handled over 4,500 projects involving a total investment cost of over US $540 billion. The company has its principal design head offices and technical support facilities located in Beirut, Lebanon; Cairo, Egypt; London, UK; Pune, India; and Amman, Jordan.

And the file data management solution they rely on to achieve their mission of enabling sustainable architecture and engineering consultancy around the globe is the Resilio Active Everywhere Platform.

The Challenges

Dar supports an expansive global network of over 9,000 professionals in 54 offices across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Before adopting Resilio, the company faced significant challenges in data management and replication across these geographically dispersed office locations. 

Data replication proved especially difficult due to many factors, including slow internet bandwidth and high network latency averaging 100ms (a.k.a. long fat pipe network). Their previous data replication methods relied on Robocopy scheduled scripts and utilizing Microsoft DFS-Replication servers, making them highly inefficient and slow, especially when data files got bigger and bigger (more than 1GB file sizes). 

Typically about tens of gigabytes of data need to be sent to another design office in minutes over a fat-long Internet VPN pipe. This, coupled with the limitations of SMB, the chatty TCP protocol, and the high network latency cross-site VPN, severely impacted the speed, delivery, and reliability of file transfers across offices.

“Sending and receiving data files to our remote offices was too slow,” said infrastructure and cloud systems manager, Mohammad Badran. “The very slow data transfer rates of our previous replication mechanisms meant our engineers were struggling with long delays that could potentially impact projects from being delivered on time.”

If Dar was going to take on the world’s most exciting and ambitious architecture and development projects, the team needed a solution that could meet its needs and quickly provide two-way data replication across its internet VPN-connected offices.

After an eight-month search of trying many modern file systems and collaboration technologies that failed to deliver, Dar finally found Resilio Active Everywhere.

“We tried many software solutions, but none of them could fulfill our technological requirements. The only platform that performed up to our standards was Resilio.”Mohammad Badran, Infrastructure and Cloud Systems Manager at Dar

The Solution

Dar selected the Resilio Active Everywhere Platform for its resilient management of file-based data at a global scale.

Using a UDP-based protocol, Resilio optimizes Dar’s available VPN bandwidth, enabling faster file transfers between offices—even over high-latency networks. Features like data compression, WAN optimization, and differential transfers enable Resilio to expedite the synchronization process and minimize synchronization latency. 

Badran noted that one of the biggest advantages of the Resilio approach is that “it can consume the full Internet bandwidth you give it and overcomes the high network latency issues. In many cases, Resilio Agent was saturating the whole internet bandwidth of a given office 200 Mbits/sec. And because it uses file hashes and file staging, there’s no file corruption. That’s not the case with alternative technologies.”

Resilio rapidly detects file modifications for near-real-time updates across all remote locations. And with real-time error monitoring, Active Everywhere automatically sends notifications for any file transfer errors, ensuring the Dar information technology infrastructure team always provides prompt resolution.

“We are heavily using the Resilio Agents to replicate thousands of files and terabytes of data over 350+ Resilio Synchronization Jobs across 6 countries.”Mohammad Badran, Infrastructure and Cloud Systems Manager at Dar

Resilio Active Everywhere works in the cloud, on-premises, and on edge devices to deliver active, current, and accessible file data everywhere. Dar now has easy and unified access to files wherever they’re stored—across any distance.

Resilio is designed for automation and speed. It’s up to ten times faster than conventional replication software and can handle the most demanding enterprise IT environments. In addition, all manual operations can be automated using the Resilio REST API.

Badran noted how quickly the team was able to benefit from the Resilio platform. “Resilio was very easy to set up and operate,” he explained. “We’ve tried other solutions before, and none have impressed us more than Resilio.”

In addition to data collaboration, Dar decided to utilize the proven Resilio Agents and Synchronization Jobs to send tens of terabytes of data files and folders between our design offices as a DR copy for selective engineering projects.

The Results

Implementing Resilio Active Everywhere had a transformative impact on Dar’s operations.

Delays are a thing of the past, as Dar’s engineers now receive the business files (especially Autodesk AutoCAD, Autodesk Revit, Microsoft Office files, large PDF files, and maps) they need—right when they need them. Wait times that took hours previously are now reduced to literary minutes with rapid file transfers. Naturally, with delays no longer slowing them down, the Dar engineering teams can easily collaborate and focus less on IT issues and more on completing their project deliverables. With faster data replication and access, Dar can now more reliably meet project deadlines while maintaining the highest standards of quality. 

These results have led to a direct improvement in how Dar conducts business with its clients. “As an engineering consultant, we price our end product based on the number of hours it takes our engineers to work on a given project,” said Badran. “Before Resilio, our engineers could be waiting hours for files to get replicated across offices, which put our ability to meet project deadlines at risk.”

“We frequently check Resilio’s roadmap and try to implement their newest features like File Caching and Distributed File Locking.”Mohammad Badran, Infrastructure and Cloud Systems Manager at Dar

But now, with Resilio Active Everywhere, getting their work done comes easily. “Our distributed teams don’t have to worry anymore. Wherever they are in the world, data is delivered instantly with Resilio.”

Summary

By choosing Resilio, Dar not only addressed its immediate data replication challenges but also elevated the standard of service it offers to its clients and increased data collaboration among engineers. When data moves faster, projects run smoother, enabling Dar to uphold its commitment to delivering technical excellence and exceptional value for the global communities it serves.

“Our distributed engineering teams don’t have to worry anymore. Wherever they are in the world, data is delivered instantly with Resilio.”Mohammad Badran, Infrastructure and Cloud Systems Manager at Dar

As the name suggests, Resilio is built to get architecture, engineering, and construction companies active everywhere. Want to see our platform in action? Contact our experts for a live, personalized demo today.