Vinchin facilitates multi-hypervisor backup for the Singaporean National Institute of Education affiliated with NTU university

We are exploring the V2V migration solution from Citrix to OLVM, and find Vinchin in some Google search results. So, we dive into the software, and turns out it’s an ideal choice with everything we need. Easy deployment, user-friendly UI, V2V migration, high compatibility, and recovery features for RTO and RPO.

Rizal Siam, Head of Infrastructure

The National Institute of Education

Business Challenge

The National Institute of Education (NIE) is a renowned educational institution of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore with a long history dating back to 1990 when the Institute of Education and the College of Physical Education merged which provides teacher education and professional development programs. The institute offers courses in multiple disciplines to equip educators with the knowledge and skills required to deliver quality education. It opens with the School of Arts, School of Science, School of Education, School of Physical Education, and a Centre for Applied Research in Education, then introduced more courses like Supervisory and Curriculum Management Skills for Subject and Level Heads, and Mentoring and Developmental Supervision for Senior Teachers.

NIE has a mixed environment including 500 VMs in total on VMWare, Citrix, and OLVM running Student management system, NIE Portal (NIE Student and Staff Portal), Research Management System, NIE Research private cloud, VDI, etc. As the institute grows and expands, the IT infrastructure must keep pace with the changing needs of the institute to support its academic activities. However, managing the IT infrastructure and ensuring data backup and recovery can be a challenging task.

To meet the challenges of managing a complex IT environment and migrating Citrix data to Oracle OLVM, NIE decided to adopt an enterprise-level backup solution that offers reliable backup and recovery services for multi-hypervisor environments. “We have a critical system and various system that keeps student and staff data which are sensitive,” Rizal Siam, the Infrastructure Head, Database and Service Management Department of Academic Computing and Information Services at NIE said,“and the system needs to meet certain Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) requirements to be qualified for the NIE Business Continuity Management System (NIE BCMS) certification, we have to have enterprise backup solution in place.”

Vinchin Solution

"Managing multiple hypervisors and ensuring data backup and recovery was a daunting task for us. We tested quite a few solutions but none of them worked as expected until we met Vinchin and decided to give it a try," said Rizal.

With Vinchin Backup & Recovery, NIE could easily migrate from Citrix to Oracle OLVM and manage multiple hypervisors using a single platform. “We did a deep research about solutions for Citrix to OLVM migration and Vinchin ranked high on many measures—Google results, customer reviews, and performance test,” Rizal added, “and it was simple to operate. No extra conversion process, or other tools, all you need to do is restore backups of the source to the target platform, and that is it.”

The solution provides a clean interface that allows NIE's IT team to manage VMware, Citrix, and Oracle OLVM in a web-based console. It allows NIE to back up, migrate, recover, and protect its multiple hypervisors with a bunch of smart strategies in one solution.

"Vinchin Backup & Recovery is a game-changer for us. The solution is easy to use, and we can manage all our backup and recovery tasks from a single interface. The CBT-supported forever incremental backup has reduced the backup time significantly, and the data reduction feature has saved us a lot of storage space considering we have a huge environment, this is pretty cost-effective," said Rizal.

NIE's IT team also appreciated the instant recovery and file-level recovery features of Vinchin Backup & Recovery. These features enabled them to restore data in case of data loss accidents, reducing the recovery time and meeting the institute's RTO and RPO requirements. "The recovery features of Vinchin Backup & Recovery are fantastic. With these features, we can restore data quickly and efficiently, in one minute to be specific, minimizing downtime and ensuring business continuity," said Rizal.

Result

In conclusion, Vinchin Backup & Recovery has helped NIE manage its IT infrastructure effectively and ensure reliable data backup and recovery services. The solution has enabled NIE's IT team to meet their V2V migration and multi-hypervisor management requirements while ensuring timely data recovery to meet the institute's RTO and RPO objectives.

customer_story_nie.pdf