How Toyota Modernized Data Protection with Synology

How Toyota Modernized Data Protection with Synology ActiveProtect

For many years, Toyota Motor Vietnam, part of one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers, relied on tape backups to meet its long-term data retention requirements. While tape offered scalable storage, it became increasingly difficult to manage as production data continued to grow.

After implementing Synology ActiveProtect, Toyota transformed its backup operations, achieving up to 90% less operational effort, significantly faster recovery times, and stronger cyber resilience.

The company’s experience demonstrates how modern backup appliances can replace complex tape-based workflows with automated, centralized data protection.

The Challenges of Traditional Tape Backups

Manufacturing organizations generate enormous volumes of data every day, including:

• CAD design files

• Production logs

• Quality control records

• Operational data

• Long-term archives

Toyota experienced annual data growth ranging from 10% to 30%, placing increasing pressure on its backup infrastructure.

While tape backups offered inexpensive long-term storage, they also introduced several operational challenges.

These included:

• Frequent tape replacements, sometimes every one to four weeks

• No built-in deduplication

• Backup jobs that required several days to complete

• Complex manual management

• Slow disaster recovery

Maintaining off-site protection required IT teams to manually remove, transport, rotate, and store physical tapes. If a recovery was needed, retrieving those tapes could take days, creating unacceptable downtime risks.

Toyota also noted limited visibility across multiple backup locations, making centralized monitoring difficult.

As the organization continued to grow, it became clear that its backup strategy needed to evolve.

Moving to Synology ActiveProtect

After evaluating multiple solutions, Toyota selected Synology ActiveProtect, an all-in-one backup appliance designed to simplify enterprise backup while improving cyber resilience.

The company created separate protection policies for different workloads.

Its deployment included:

• Approximately 50 mission-critical virtual machines and servers protected with immutable backups and off-site replication

• Around 150 additional virtual machines replicated across five remote locations

• Backup policies aligned with the 3-2-1-1-0 backup strategy

Despite operating across multiple backup environments, IT administrators could monitor backup status, replication progress, and storage utilization from a single centralized dashboard.

This dramatically simplified day-to-day administration.

Up to 80% Less Storage Consumption

One of the biggest improvements came from Synology’s SURE (Synology Unified Reduction Engine) technology.

By combining incremental backups with global deduplication, ActiveProtect significantly reduced duplicate data across workloads.

Toyota reported:

• Up to 80% lower storage consumption

• Dramatically slower storage growth

• Improved storage efficiency

• Reduced infrastructure requirements

Because less data needed to be processed, backup jobs that previously required several days could now finish within hours.

Recovery Times Reduced from Days to Minutes

Backup speed is only part of the equation. Recovery performance is equally important.

With traditional tape backups, restoring systems required locating tapes, transporting them, and completing lengthy restoration procedures.

ActiveProtect changed this process completely.

Using instant restore capabilities, Toyota could recover workloads directly from the backup repository.

As a result:

• Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) dropped from several days to only minutes.

• Critical systems could be restored much faster.

• Business disruption during outages was greatly reduced.

Recovery testing also became dramatically easier.

Instead of spending days validating backup integrity, administrators could launch automated disaster recovery tests inside ActiveProtect’s built-in sandbox environment within minutes, without affecting production systems.

Modernizing Off-Site Backup Protection

Physical tape was traditionally valued because it could be stored offline, protecting backup copies from cyber threats.

ActiveProtect delivers similar protection while eliminating manual processes.

After backups are completed, the platform automatically replicates data to remote locations while maintaining immutable copies.

Organizations can also configure automated logical air-gap policies that isolate backup repositories without requiring physical tape handling.

This provides:

• Automated off-site replication

• Immutable backup protection

• Logical air-gap security

• Reduced administrative effort

• Improved ransomware resilience

Toyota achieved the same level of isolated protection previously offered by tape while greatly improving operational efficiency.

Better Visibility and Simpler Audits

Centralized management became another major advantage.

Instead of checking multiple backup systems individually, administrators could monitor every backup, replication job, and storage repository from a single interface.

Toyota reported saving several hours of administrative work each week.

Audit preparation also improved considerably.

Previously, collecting backup information required multiple IT staff working for two to five days.

With ActiveProtect, audit reports could be generated from one centralized platform in only a few hours.

Operational Improvements

Building Confidence Through Regular Recovery Testing

Perhaps the biggest improvement extended beyond technology.

Tape-based recovery testing was slow, labor-intensive, and risked damaging physical media.

Because of this, recovery tests were typically performed only once or twice each year and were sometimes skipped altogether.

ActiveProtect made testing fast, automated, and non-disruptive.

Toyota shifted from occasional testing to performing recovery validation on a weekly or monthly basis.

According to the company:

“Teams are now more confident and willing to test regularly, a cultural shift from ‘avoid testing’ to ‘test regularly.'”

Regular validation gives IT teams greater confidence that backup data can be successfully restored whenever needed.

Why ActiveProtect Delivers More Than Backup

Toyota’s experience illustrates that modern data protection is no longer just about storing backup copies.

By replacing traditional tape workflows with Synology ActiveProtect, organizations can:

• Simplify backup administration

• Reduce storage consumption

• Accelerate backup and recovery

• Improve ransomware resilience

• Automate off-site protection

• Simplify compliance and audits

• Increase confidence through frequent recovery testing

Rather than simply replacing tape, ActiveProtect modernizes the entire backup lifecycle, helping organizations improve operational efficiency while ensuring their critical business data remains protected and recoverable.

About Epis Technology

Epis Technology helps organizations modernize and secure their backup infrastructure with expert Synology consulting, ActiveProtect deployment, Microsoft 365 backup, disaster recovery planning, storage optimization, and ongoing managed support. By combining deep Synology expertise with practical infrastructure design, Epis Technology enables businesses to strengthen cyber resilience, simplify backup management, reduce operational costs, and build scalable data protection environments that support long-term growth.