Vinchin improves the stability and speed of XenServer backups by times for Vianet

Vinchin Backup & Recovery manages to support our XenServer environment with fast and stable incremental backups that our old backup solution rarely performs. By using it we get to know that simplicity CAN be brought into data protection without giving up powerful functionality, which matches the No.1 rule for us when choosing a new backup solution.

Jonny Marafioti, Server Administrator

Vianet

Business Challenge

Headquartered in Jundiaí, the interior of São Paulo, one of the fastest-growing regions in Brazil, Vianet, as a telecommunications operator and provider of high-speed Internet services, voice and optical fiber TV, cloud solutions, perimeter security systems and technology for smart condominiums, has network covering more than 18 cities in São Paulo in addition to interconnection with several national and international operators, allowing connectivity to any location in the Brazilian territory.

Vianet’s IT infrastructure is mostly built upon virtualization. “We have applications and tools for network management on XenServer hosts, which play a vital role to keep all of our services functioning normally,” says Jonny, “so we emphasize a lot on the importance of having all data well protected.”

However, their last backup solution failed to meet their expectation for stable XenServer protection. “Several fatal weaknesses had shown during the software implementation. For example, the lack of job notification made us have to check out the backup status frequently, preventing unnecessary data loss due to a tiny backup job error.” Says Jonny, “Apart from that, the backup speed was also slow, and backup jobs for a relatively large VM sometimes failed.”

Considering the disadvantages of their previous backup solution that might discourage them from delivering customers more secure services, Vianet started to turn head for a better alternative. “Our goal is quite simple, that is to have reliable and fast incremental VM backups that allow us to use whenever we need a quick recovery.”

Vinchin Solution

Vinchin Backup & Recovery was recommended to Vianet as they were doing research of reliable automatic XenServer backup solutions. “We were given access to all features during the free trial, which in a way helped us get to know the real capability of the software better at the very beginning,” says Jonny, “and it obviously shows its huge advantage that drives us to eventually choose Vinchin.”

Vinchin Backup & Recovery shows the out-of-the-box development concept first by quick installation process. “Under the leads of the straightforward installation guide, less than 10 minutes the software is all ready to use.” Says Jonny. “The job configs also went out super easy. In just 3 or 4 steps of quick setting, we got to run an automatic backup job for one of our XenServer VM, which is a significant improvement compared with our last solution.”

Vianet now uses Vinchin Backup & Recovery to protect the XenServer environment that mount most parts of the key services. With LAN-Free data transport and Changed Block Tracking being put into full utilization, the incremental backup speed has been improved by multiple times than before. “Even virtual machines with large data size can be backed up smoothly and we had never encountered any issue on running such heavy backup workloads with Vinchin.” Says Jonny.

Result

Vinchin Backup & Recovery provides Vianet with a stable and efficient XenServer backup solution to support the data center’s daily operations, as well as to reduce the administration time of data protection for the IT team. “We now can be more focus on the new projects without frequently worrying about the backup job failures. Vinchin helps us out of the technical limitations of the old backup solution we used to have, by bringing a more user-friendly and powerful scheme of XenServer protection.” Says Jonny.

customer_story_vianet.pdf