Anchoring Global Maritime IT and Data Resilience for Navarino's Fleet with Synology

When IT infrastructure operates across the world’s oceans, reliability becomes a mission-critical requirement rather than a convenience. Merchant vessels operate as floating edge-computing nodes, isolated by thousands of miles of ocean and entirely dependent on satellite connectivity.

The hardware running on them has to survive continuous vibration, elevated temperatures, atmospheric salt and dust, and power conditions that are notoriously unpredictable. Even with UPS protection in place, abrupt interruptions are common. To make this kind of platform viable across the fleet, Navarino needed a backup and edge-storage partner that could match those demands: rugged enough to survive vessel conditions, flexible enough to host third-party application workloads alongside backup, and reliable enough to recover from system failures without prolonged downtime.

Through its IT-as-a-Service platform Quazar,Navarino delivers fully managed IT infrastructure aboard each vessel, with Infinity, its onboard hyper-converged system, handling connectivity, network management, and virtual servers. To avoid a single point of failure in the onboard platform, Navarino needed a secondary system to sit alongside it: running independent tools, storing critical documentation and safety manuals, backing up the virtual machines, and providing the flexibility to host additional application workloads. Synology hardware was deployed across the fleet to fill that role.

Across vessels, Navarino sizes Synology RackStation and DiskStation units to each ship’s workload, with compact units on smaller vessels and enterprise rackmount systems on larger or more demanding deployments. All units are populated with Synology’s enterprise-grade drives, standardized across the fleet to simplify spares logistics.

Beyond backup, the Synology systems operate as versatile edge servers. They natively host third-party application workloads, including the team’s preferred backup agent, which integrates without an intermediary server. They also retain large volumes of CCTV footage and secure operational data through built-in AES-256 encryption. Consolidating these roles into one platform meaningfully reduces the physical hardware footprint on each vessel.

The architecture has been tested in real conditions. In one Atlantic crossing, a NAS rack dislodged during heavy seas and the system lost drives in its array. Navarino’s team stabilized what remained and rebuilt the data remotely within three days.

“We were able to restore everything. This is something that only Synology is doing in the maritime industry. It is a lifesaver. If the vessel is in the middle of the Atlantic and you have to send a disk, it’s going to take a month. We had the backups, we had the files.”

— Constantinos Koutsouradis, Navarino Chief Digital Services Officer

Across years of fleet deployment, Synology has anchored two operational outcomes that are difficult to achieve in the maritime edge. The first is bandwidth-optimized data protection: a strict 3-2-1 backup strategy that runs on scheduled windows tuned to the realities of satellite connectivity, protecting critical data across multiple locations without congesting the vessel’s primary network. For a fleet that pays for every bit it transmits, this matters operationally and commercially.

The second is durability that’s been proven, not promised. The Synology rackmount systems have run through vibration, heat, salt, and abrupt power loss across years of vessel operation, all while being managed remotely from shore. That consistency at the edge is what lets Navarino’s customers trust that the data behind their operations is there when they need it.

"From an integrator’s perspective, the recommendation for a fully Synology-based approach was strongly aligned with the operational and commercial realities of a 24/7 global maritime environment... a single-vendor ecosystem like Synology significantly reduces supply chain complexity and makes global deployment much more predictable" 

— Kiriaki Rousianou, MSystems Strategic Account Manager

For the execution of this global-scale infrastructure, Navarino partnered with Msystems to act as their logistical and commercial engine. Recognizing Navarino’s highly specialized in-house R&D and engineering expertise, Msystems focused strictly on supporting and enhancing execution at scale rather than replacing technical roles. Msystems achieved this by proactively securing dedicated stock for the entire project duration, which effectively eliminated rollout lead times and ensured demand-driven. 

This approach-maintained budget stability across all phases by insulating the project from supply chain volatility.  By removing operational friction and absorbing the supply chain burden, Msystems empowered Navarino’s teams to focus entirely on delivering and seamlessly scaling their high-quality maritime IT solutions.