Leading insurance company in Argentina trusts Vinchin for efficient FC-SAN OLVM backup

Vinchin Backup & Recovery ensures the stability of our IT systems that matters most to our service delivery. We cannot imagine the consequences caused by a tiny bit of data loss, and luckily the software helps downgrade such risk to the least with its reliable backup and backup copy features. We appreciate its ease-of-use that makes complete OLVM VM protection to be close at our hands.

Alfredo Colombres, Infrastructure Technology Manager

La Caja de Ahorro y Seguro

Business Challenge

La Caja de Ahorro y Seguro (The Savings and Insurance Bank) is a leading insurance company in Argentina that has more than 2,200 employees and 67 branches throughout the country. It provides insurance services for Auto, Home, Health, Notebook, Bicycle, Life and Mobile Technology, and other fields that links to people’s daily life. With a marked orientation towards technology and innovation, it stands out for its wide range of products that seek to satisfy customer needs in the simplest way.

La Caja virtualized the IT infrastructure on Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager, and has two sites connected with fibre channels (FC) for more flexible and convenient day-to-day IT operations. Various types of applications responsible for claims management, customer document management, and data analysis are simultaneously running on the OLVM VMs in La Caja’s main IT environment, and any chance of data missing or business downtime spells detrimental loss for the company. “Having data well-protected should be the most important prerequisite for reliable insurance service delivery,” says Alfredo, “and we need to ensure the IT system is supported by a powerful backup product that matches its high performance.”

La Caja had previously adopted a backup solution for their Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager environment for some time, but its lack of stability and ease-of-use often gave the team much headache on backup task administration. “Backup for VMs with large data quantity always takes time, or even fails at half way due to unexpected technical errors. We had to constantly monitor the task processing interface to see if it succeeds.” Says Alfredo, “That’s why we decided to look for another tool shortly afterwards, one that has higher stability and simplicity.”

Vinchin Solution

After taking performance tests of multiple backup software that’s compatible with OLVM environments, IT team of La Caja eventually chose Vinchin Backup & Recovery for its stand-out features and automated backup efficiency. Vinchin Backup & Recovery helps them greatly reduce backup windows with FC-SAN data transfer mode support, and build a disaster recovery center with easy-to-configure Vinchin Backup Copy.

Vinchin technical support team reached IT team of La Caja online the first time to help them get the solution quickly deployed in their two main production sites. “Under Vinchin team’s efficient remote support, software installation and network pre-configs were done in a very short time.” Says Alfredo. Through the straightforward wizard-driven console provided by Vinchin Backup & Recovery, they got a scheduled OLVM VM backup job running in less than 10 minutes. “VM backups can now be stably transferred to backup storage at high speed during business hours, thanks to the LAN-Free transfer method the software supports.” Says Alfredo.

Besides on-premises smart scheduled VM backups, Vinchin Backup & Recovery also performs as a helpful agent to build a reliable bridge between La Caja’s major IT infrastructure and remote DR site with offsite backup copies. “We asked for a proper way to save extra copies of the backups from the major two sites, and Vinchin Backup & Recovery gives us its resolution.” Says Alfredo, “Their technical team again delivered in-time support when we first attempted to create an offsite backup copy job, and the final result went out quite satisfying.” The process of adding offsite storage and setting scheduled backup copy strategy can still be achieved in the unified console without extra operational interface needed.

Another problem solved by Vinchin Backup & Recovery is that, according to IT team of La Caja, every time when a backup or backup copy job is finished, or encounters an issue, the backup system will automatically send e-mail notifications. "It keeps us updated with the job running status most in time, no need to frequently switch to the backup console if we’re busy with other IT projects." Says Alfredo.

Result

La Caja installed Vinchin Backup & Recovery to protect their main IT infrastructure virtualized on Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager, and succeeded to establish a more stable and efficient backup and DR system with the help of streamlined VM backups, FC-SAN data transport, and offsite backup copy the software provides. “Vinchin Backup & Recovery has greatly simplified our daily backup administration workloads with its ready-to-start powerful features. This is a brand new experience we’ve never had before.” Says Alfredo.

customer_story_lacaja.pdf