Tape fans take a new path with Veeam: FHNW cuts its tape library by 75%

FHNW attracts people from all over the world to study, research, and work there. Part of the university’s appeal is its commitment to empowering users with access to the latest technological tools to share, access, and generate data.

“We’re a knowledge factory, so data is our central resource, our gold,” said Patrick Gebhard, System Engineer Data Center and Team Lead Network at FHNW. “Users depend on the university’s IT systems for the data they need to carry out important work and achieve research breakthroughs. To retain our reputation as a leading destination for students, researchers and teaching staff, we must ensure that this data is protected at all times.”

However, FHNW’s legacy data protection solutions were failing to keep pace with the university’s evolving needs. The university’s IT team found itself increasingly spending time managing data backups, and therefore using up valuable resources that could have been better expended elsewhere.

“Our data is growing fast, driven by everything from huge video files to high-resolution precision measurement tools,” said Gebhard. “We also adopted Microsoft 365, and our cloud data storage footprint is expanding rapidly as a result. We wanted a robust, easy-to-use approach to data protection that could ensure data resilience on-premises and in the cloud.”

To ensure 24/7 reliable access to important research data, FHNW chose Veeam. The university engaged experienced Veeam partner Sonio AG to update its deployment and optimize the architecture and configuration.

“When we started with Veeam, the solution was light years ahead of the competition in terms of functionality and manageability,” said Gebhard. “We recently worked with Veeam partner Sonio to upgrade our Veeam environment and modernize our entire server, storage, and backup infrastructure, by further strengthening data resilience and increasing cost-efficiency.”

FHNW uses Veeam to protect 1,000 virtual machines (VMs) hosted on 42 physical servers, with 500 TB of data. The university’s key applications include Microsoft SQL Server database clusters, the Moodle learning platform and EVENTO school management software.

“Veeam integrates seamlessly with our VMware virtualization platform and Hitachi data storage,” said Gebhard. “It offers a scalable, simple and agent-less approach to backups across our IT environment. We also have the flexibility to restore data from bare metal machines into a virtualized environment or even into the cloud, which helps us respond quickly in the event of a hardware failure.”

FHNW has relied on Veeam’s growing list of supported hypervisors to reduce costs and accelerate migration of some systems to Proxmox Virtual Environment.

To protect its most valuable collaboration toolset, FHNW trusts Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365.

“Microsoft 365 is such an important solution for us that our choice of data resilience solution was critical,” said Gebhard. “Veeam Data Cloud delivers a cost-efficient and reliable all-inclusive managed service. We especially like that we can store backups in Azure in a second region to protect us further. The Veeam user interface is intuitive and provides easy access to features we’ve come to depend on — such as single file or email recovery.”

In moving to Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365, FHNW doubled its backup retention period and simplified access to older files and emails.

“We used to store older backups only on tape,” said Gebhard. “Recovering a single email from two months ago could take about a week, as we had to restore a complete 50 TB tape backup. Today, I can recover older data in minutes, saving time and providing a better experience for our researchers and staff.”

Working with their partner Sonio, FHNW also streamlined backup data management. The team deployed Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform as high-performance primary backup repository and a Hitachi Content Platform object storage solution with 3 PB capacity as secondary backup storage to replace all monthly tape backups.

“By relying on Veeam, I have peace of mind that our data is fully protected,” said Gebhard. “Veeam is helping us to provide 100% data availability to our users. By empowering researchers and faculty with data, we’re keeping FHNW on the map as the place for great minds to do their best work.”

• Reduces costs by cutting tape requirements by 75%.
  FHNW downsized its tape library from 2,100 to 500 slots because of its move to Veeam Data Cloud, lowering IT costs and boosting efficiency of the IT team.
• Cuts backup administration workload by 90%.
  The solution protects 6x more virtual machines and boosts operational efficiency. It also serves as a central point of control for backups and automation, freeing up significant time for the FHNW IT team to spend supporting the university’s users and advancing innovation.
• Supports easy migration to Proxmox VE hypervisor.
  “Veeam is helping us to provide 100% data availability across platforms,” said Gebhard. “We used Veeam to migrate some systems from VMware to Proxmox Virtual Environment and also tested recovery from local workloads into the cloud. Veeam offers future-proof data resilience capabilities supporting the university’s evolving technology strategy.”