The FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland protects data for 30,000 users while boosting efficiency by 90% with Veeam

The FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland 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. 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, which included HPE Data Protector and Acronis Cyber Protect, were failing to keep pace with the university’s evolving needs. The university’s IT team found itself spending more and more time managing data backups, using up valuable resources that could have been better expended elsewhere.

“Our data is growing fast, driven by everything from arts students creating huge video files to researchers using increasingly high- resolution precision measurement tools,” said Gebhard. “We’ve also adopted Microsoft 365, and our cloud data storage footprint is expanding fast as a result. We wanted a robust, easy-to-use approach to data protection that could ensure data availability across on-premises and cloud-hosted systems.”

To ensure 24/7 reliable access to data for students, researchers and faculty, FHNW chose Veeam. The university engaged long-time partner LAKE Solutions AG to provide the Veeam licenses and help with the implementation.

“Veeam was light years ahead of the competition in terms of functionality and manageability,” said Gebhard. “By engaging our trusted partner LAKE Solutions, we were able to take advantage of their deep knowledge of our IT environment to cut time-to-value for the project.”

FHNW uses Veeam to protect 1,300 virtual machines hosted on 45 physical servers, with 350TB 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 software and HPE storage,” said Gebhard. “It offers a scalable, simple and agent-less approach to backups across our end-to-end IT environment. We now have the flexibility to restore data from bare metal machines into a virtualized environment and vice versa, which helps us respond quickly in the event of a hardware failure.”

To protect its most valuable collaboration toolset, FHNW also deployed Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365. The university selected Veeam over competing options including NetApp and Commvault.

“Microsoft 365 is such an important solution for our users that our choice of backup tool was critical,” said Gebhard. “We decided to store our backup locally, which eliminated the NetApp SaaS Backup option. And when we compared Veeam and Commvault, we found that Veeam was much simpler to set up and manage. The Veeam user interface is intuitive and provides easy access to features we’ve come to depend on — such as single file recovery.”

Today, FHNW has a sophisticated data protection policy in place that combines incremental backups on disk, plus oftine copies on tape, all powered by Veeam. The university’s IT team can adjust the policy dynamically to accommodate new demands from users.

“Thanks to Veeam, I have peace of mind that our data is fully protected, which means I can sleep well!” said Gebhard. “The local Veeam team is only a phone call away if we have any questions, and alongside LAKE Solutions AG, they often suggest opportunities for optimization to us. At FHNW, we’re always improving, learning new things and finding different ways to accomplish our goals, and Veeam aligns perfectly with that approach.”

• Reduces risk with data protection across multiple platforms, including safeguarding 150TB of cloud data for 30,000 Microsoft 365 users. 
  By choosing Veeam, we avoid vendor lock-in and can back up and restore data to and from different locations,” said Gebhard. “It offers us future-proof data protection capabilities that we can adapt alongside the university’s technology strategy.”
• Cuts backup administration workload by 90%, while protecting six times more virtual machines, boosting operational efficiency. 
  Thanks to a central point of control for backups and automation enabled by Veeam, the FHNW IT team has freed up significant time that it can spend supporting the university’s users.
• Supports student learning and research breakthroughs with simple, flexible and reliable recovery capabilities for 1,300 virtual machines. 
  Veeam is helping us to provide 100 percent data availability to our users,” said Gebhard. “By empowering students, researchers and faculty with data, we’re keeping FHNW on the map as the place for great minds to do their best work.”