U Maryland Eastern Shore Consolidates Virtual Machine Backups
The
University of
Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) has replaced three separate backup
solutions with a single, consolidated solution for its virtual machine
backups and offsite archive.
The university had been using one backup solution for its Windows
virtual machines, another vendor's product for its Linux virtual
machines, as well as tape backup for offsite storage. The university's
IT staff "used to spend eight or nine hours on the weekend babysitting
backups associated with three other backup solutions," said Joe Noonan,
senior product manager for PHD Virtual, in a prepared statement.
After evaluating backup solutions from several vendors, UMES selected
PHD Virtual Backup, a virtual backup appliance
(VBA) from
PHD
Virtual Technologies. According to information on the company's
site, PHD Virtual Backup is a virtualization backup and replication
solution for
VMware,
Citrix and cloud
environments. "UMES really liked the tight integration with the virtual
environment due to our virtual appliance architecture and vCenter
plugins," said Noonan in a prepared statement.
UMES is using PHD Virtual Backup for backup and recovery of all 150 of
its virtual machines. According to the company, the solution backs up
both Windows and Linux virtual machines and also provides an automated
offsite archive. With the new, unified backup system, UMES has been
able to back up databases and other frequently updated systems more
often, and also retain more backups. PHD Virtual Backup also includes a
Rollback Recovery feature that lets the university roll back to a
specific moment in case of a mistake, data loss, or outage.
PHD Virtual Backup has improved the university's data restoration and
archival capabilities, while saving time. According to Noonan, IT staff
now "spend five minutes checking email reports" instead of monitoring
the backup process for hours at a time.
The University of Maryland Eastern Shore is a public university located
in Princess Anne, MD. The university serves approximately 4,500
undergraduate and graduate students and employs more than 1,100 faculty
and staff.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].