The University of Colorado Denver Recovers VMware VMs in Just 10 Minutes with NAKIVO
Business Challenge
Established in 1973, The School of Education & Human Development (SEHD) at the University of Colorado Denver attracts students who are passionate about careers in teaching and mental health. The school offers not only graduate and undergraduate options, but also many continuing and professional education certificates. The school matches student's passion with an education that is rooted in diversity, technology, proven approaches, and real-world practice.
"VMware VMs store our helpdesk system, including a couple of internal student information databases, some legacy systems, web development, and vCenter backup servers. It is important to maintain 24/7 access to data, so that students and faculty would be able to access information whenever they want. If a disaster strikes, it is imperative to recover our legacy system that allows faculty to keep track of their notes and students. Basically, it is integral for us to backup, replicate, and recover VMware VMs," says Matt Mitchell, Web Developer at SEHD, the University of Colorado Denver.
Previously, SEHD's virtual environment was protected by a legacy backup solution. "With the previous backup tool, the support license has expired, and at the same time, we upgraded our VMware infrastructure to ESXi 6.5, and all VMware VM backups just stopped working. The company was not very helpful with resolving our issue and we just decided that it would be easier to look for an alternative solution. Furthermore, this backup solution did not have a web interface, general notifications were mediocre, and storage space was expanding rapidly. It was very cumbersome to set up backup jobs and I had to spend time on backup administration, since those backup jobs were failing regularly," says Matt.
Solution
SEHD chose NAKIVO Backup & Replication for two reasons. NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers a rich feature set for protecting virtualized environments, and performs better than other backup solutions. "I downloaded and installed NAKIVO Backup & Replication on a backup server. The whole installation process took maybe five minutes and the software was up and running probably within a half an hour. While I was testing the software, I did VM backup and VM replication, then tried out Flash VM Boot to test the recoverability of backups. All features were fast and I did not have to worry about expanding storage space on ESXi hosts," says Matt.
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, VM backup is quick and efficient. "We perform VM backup every single day and usually it takes a couple of hours for backup jobs to finish. I do not have to worry about failed VM backups anymore because NAKIVO Backup & Replication is reliable, and I no longer have to waste time on backup administration, like I did in the past. In terms of VM replication, I replicate VMs to the same location just for the testing purposes. I had a VMware VM that had a wrong version of VMware tools set up, so I replicated that VM, and then made the necessary updates to VMware tools, so that the VM replica would be identical with the source VM. After that, I was able to fail over from the source VM to the VM replica, and return back with failback," says Matt.
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Flash VM Boot allows to recover VMs within minutes. "With the previous backup tool, I was not able to perform full VM recovery, but with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, I am able to recover VMware VMs within 10 minutes. By recovering a VM back into our virtual environment, Flash VM Boot helps us to maintain 24/7 availability of data. Lastly, I was able to decrease storage space with data deduplication, resulting in more efficient disk space utilization and lower storage costs," says Matt.
Results
NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides SEHD with quick and efficient VM backup and reduced backup administration time. "NAKIVO Backup & Replication solved our problem with failing backup jobs and I do not waste time on those failed backups anymore," says Matt. With Flash VM Boot, the school is now able to instantly recover full VMware VMs. "With previous backup tools, I could not recover full VMs, but with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, I can recover VMware VMs within 10 minutes. With data deduplication, we were able to decrease storage space by 80%." says Matt.
Company Profile
The University of Colorado Denver provides a quality academic experience through engagement with gifted faculty members, original research, and real-world learning. Located in the heart of downtown, CU Denver offers nearly 15,000 students unparalleled internship, career, and networking opportunities. Part of the fabric of the city, CU Denver has evolved into the leading urban public university boasting eight schools and colleges, and offering bachelor through doctoral degrees. For more information, visit www.ucdenver.edu.