Vinchin saves more time for Gandalf Distribution AB with fast and easy-to-manage XenServer backups

Switch to Vinchin Backup & Recovery for XenServer protection is a worthwhile decision. It requires less time to get a more satisfying backup, recovery and storage-saving results than the old backup solution we had in the past. We no longer worry about the complexity of protecting high data volumes, as it breaks the barrier easily with a series of easy-to-use yet powerful functionalities.

IT Manager

Gandalf Distribution AB

Business Challenge

Gandalf Distribution AB was founded in Malmö, Sweden in 1984, and later became a part of ELKO Group in 2017, one of the region's largest distributors of IT and consumer electronics products and solutions, present in 11 countries in Europe. They import, market and sell IT-related hardware, software and consumer electronic products to partner resellers across Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland. With great commitment and close collaboration with partners, the company develops attractive offers to maximize profitability and volume growth at all levels.

Gandalf virtualized the IT environment mostly on XenServer, where critical development tools, internal applications, and file servers that save customers’ private information including product ordering and shipping records are placed. Therefore, any kind of data loss could lead to severe influence on the company’s day-to-day operations. “To maintain the stability of online service and security of our customers’ private information are very important for us, which, in some way implies the necessity of having proper backup and recovery plans for the virtual machines.” Says the IT Manager.

Gandalf had used another backup solution for XenServer for some time in the past. “It was a pretty cost-effective one, yet with some shortcomings on the backup performance.” Says the IT Manager. “Due to the classic backup scheme it applies, the only available full backup usually takes long time to process. Besides, the design of management console is hard for us to quickly grab a hold of the working status of the whole backup system.” Considering the increasing data volumes, the company decided to find a better alternative.

Vinchin Solution

IT Manager found Vinchin Backup & Recovery online, signed for a live demo and a free full-featured trial to test its capability. “It turns out to meet all of our data protection requirements, which makes us to do the final purchase without hesitation right after the 60-day trial ends.” Says the IT Manager.

“To get Vinchin Backup & Recovery installed only requires less than 10 minutes, and we’re able to get backup of any virtual machine up running through straightforward configurations.” Says the IT Manager. With the web-based management console Vinchin Backup & Recovery provides, the IT team of Gandalf now can not only easily manage a single backup or restore job, but also quickly grab a hold of the working status of the whole backup system in the graphics-based visualization interface.

Vinchin Backup & Recovery performs image-based, fast incremental XenServer backups with the utilization of Changed Block Tracking technology. “The backup speed is absolutely fast, and the transfer process is much stable as well that we’ve never encountered any technical issue on that.” With deduplication and compression, the size of Gandalf’s XenServer backups have also been reduced by 60%, which saves up valuable space in the backup repository.

Gandalf can now use granular restore of Vinchin Backup & Recovery to quickly restore target application without recovering the whole virtual machine. “If a single application is corrupted, different from the past that we had to implement full VM recovery to get it back on track again, Vinchin Backup & Recovery allows us to directly restore files in a very short time.” Says the IT Manager.

Result

With Vinchin Backup & Recovery installed in Gandalf’s IT environment, the IT team can now quickly set efficient incremental XenServer backups to run at schedule and manage the whole backup infrastructure through a single pane of glass, and recover application at file level to guarantee the business stability. “We enjoy the simplicity of Vinchin Backup & Recovery, as it allows us to get XenServer environment fully protected in the shortest time. With least administration time, we can make sure critical data is always recoverable.” Says the IT Manager.

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