Vinchin Enables Hybrid Virtualization Platform Protection for SGCC

We have to look for a new backup solution after we implemented XenServer infrastructure in our virtualization because the previous backup solution only can protect VMware VMs. We are surprised that Vinchin not only can backup XenServer, but also can backup VMware the same time, so no doubt, We replaced the previous backup solution with Vinchin and it saves us 50% budget!

Mr Zhao, IT Manager

The State Grid Coporation of China (Shandong)

Business Challenge

The State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) commonly known as the State Grid, is the state-owned electric utility monopoly of China. It is the largest utility company in the world, and as of 2018, the world's second largest company overall by revenue. In 2016/17 it was reported as having 927,839 employees, 1.1 billion customers and revenue of 363.125 billion dollars.

The IT infrastructure at SGCC(Shandong) consists of a VMware vSphere cluster and a Citrix XenServer cluster, totally around 20 physical hosts and 120 VMs. And connect to ceph distributed storage. “We run various applications in VMware VMs, like OA system, website server and some testing software like relay protection testing system, whilst we use XenServer VMs to run Microsoft SQL, file servers and some other critical businesses. All the VM data size is no less than 220TB.” Says Mr Zhao, the IT manager of SGCC (Shandong).

“We have to look for a new backup solution after we implemented XenServer infrastructure in our virtualization because the previous backup solution only can protect VMware VMs. So we released a backup solution tender to public.” Says Mr Zhao, “We are surprised that Vinchin not only can backup XenServer, but also can backup VMware the same time, so no doubt, Vinchin won the bidding. We replaced the previous backup solution with Vinchin and it saves us 50% budget.” Says Mr Zhao.

Vinchin Solution

“It only took us less than 10 minutes to get the Vinchin backup software installed in our IT infrastructure, and took us another 2 minutes to register our VMware and XenServer infrastructure in Vinchin backup system. Vinchin is really easy to install and configure.” Says Mr Zhao, “With Vinchin Backup & Recovery, we can not only backup and recover all the VMs under our VMware and XenServer infrastructure at the same time, but also can power on / power off / suspend these VMs without login to the vsphere client or Xencenter client.”

“As the SGCC’s storage uses NAS protocol, we helped them configured two LAN-Free paths. By using LAN-Free path to transfer the data can save them 4X times when performing backup and restore jobs. And they never need to worry the heavy load of data transfer would affect their production system because all the data will be transferred directly from production storage to backup repository without occupying LAN network.” Says Yuhang Q, Technical Support Director at Vinchin.

“We appreciate that Vinchin supports instant VM recovery because the ability to rapidly recovery entire VMs is the top priority for us to consider. We can not imagine without instant recovery feature, we have to wait for hours for a backup to recovery which will cause us a lot of loss on time and money. Now we can create a Vinchin instant recovery job, and push the start button and the VM will be recovered after a few seconds.”

Result

Vinchin Backup & Recovery is now protecting all VMs under VMware and XenServer infrastructure at SGCC(Shandong). Our backup times were reduced 3X comparing with our previous product. What’s more, it saved us more than 50% budget by using Vinchin Backup & Recovery. Now we are managing and monitoring both VMware and XenServer backup jobs with a single web console, therefore, it saves us a lot of time to do other things.” Says Mr Zhao.