Vinchin reduces 50% of data size for the light XCP-ng backup of Indian IT services Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited

We are looking for a robust VM backup tool with practical features like data compression and deduplication, fast data transfer, quick data recovery, etc. All these things are found in Vinchin Backup & Recovery, the perfect choice for us at an extremely cost-effective price.

Ratul Dutta, Cloud Administrator

Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited

Business Challenge

Promoted by the Department of Higher and Technical Education, and the Government of Maharashtra, Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited (MKCL) was founded as a high-tech entity focusing on the design, development, and delivery of eLearning, eGovernance, and eEmpowerment technologies for universities, governments, and communities. MKCL has established over 5,000 authorized learning centers and benefited more than 7m students and 25,000 youngsters are employed through the network partner program.

“We have 150 XCP-ng VMs that are spread across 11 physical hosts running different applications, such as educational e-governance services, partner systems, eLearning centers, etc. We used to back up our VMs with open-source backup software, which takes up too much of our storage,” said Ratul Dutta, the Cloud Administrator of Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited.

And not only that, MKCL has VMs running on local storage and shared SAN. “The backup will occupy the network bandwidth, so the network is under a lot of strain. It’s already hard enough to support such high traffic, let alone split some with it. The backup speed isn’t that satisfactory despite the network occupation,” said Ratul.

There are even greater practical problems with the backup tool- poor recovery performance. Ratul mentioned that the utility didn’t offer many options for recovery and the data recovery speed was horrible. “It gives us few options actually, and it doesn’t run like we expected as time goes on and the data volume increases.”

Vinchin Solution

“I googled the backup solutions for XCP-ng and here it is right on the first page. I started my journey with Vinchin Backup & Recovery by knowing the features, getting a free trial, and contacting the sales for the price model. After a month of exploration and testing, the solution is incredible with every feature prompted. I can reduce my data size a lot. I can speed everything up via SAN, and I got many recovery choices. Also, I manage all my tasks and backups in one dashboard. Isn't it wonderful?” said Ratul.

Unlike the previous backup tool, Vinchin Backup & Recovery offers something different and convenient. “For starters, installation and configuration are straightforward and take us no more than 20 minutes. Then, we test the backup. It is a wow experience. We run a scheduled full backup and CBT-helped incremental backup via SAN, so the speed will be lifted significantly. Next, turn on data deduplication and compression, and data encryption. We compare the data before and after, so the size is reduced, and no duplicates. While we need to set a password for the data encryption, and later we restore that backup, the password is required. All these functions are easy to understand and operate,” said Ratul.

MKCL receives thousands of daily visits to its e-services, online recruitment services, e-Governance services, and more. The consequence of failing to restore a corrupted VM in time would be dire.  Vinchin Backup & Recovery provides instant VM recovery directly from the backup datastore within 15 seconds. Once the system is down, or the VM crashes, instant recovery can minimize disruption and downtime of production workloads. Ratul referred it as “a truly efficient VM recovery solution,” and continued, “We do everything we can to ensure that services continue running. The VM recovery of old solution works, but not as powerful as this one does.”

In a digitally interconnected world, cyber risks are literally everywhere. Every business must take data protection seriously so it won’t panic or desperate when ransomware attacks. Vinchin Backup & Recovery helps MKCL protect all backups saved in the backup server and the backup server against various malware threats with real-time IO monitoring that thwarts any unauthorized access. And with the solution, MKCL can prepare an offsite backup copy in another location or archive data to the cloud for safety.

Result

Vinchin Backup & Recovery provides MKCL with multiple innovative backup strategies like data reduction technologies, CBT, SAN, etc. to perform an effortless XCP-ng backup. It also has 15s instant recovery for the company as a safety net. Meanwhile, all data backups are safe in the solution because of different anti-ransomware measures.

customer_story_mkcl.pdf