CUSTOMER PROFILE
COMPANY: VSAC (Vermont Student Assistance Corporation)
INDUSTRY: Higher Education & Financial Services
ISSUES
- Backing up large amounts of data to physical tape
- Transport of tapes to an offsite storage company
- New backup solution must work with IBM i and ExaGrid
IBM i SYSTEM: IBM Power 9 V7.5
KEY SOLUTION
LaserVault ViTL Virtual Tape Library Emulation Solution
ViTL BENEFITS
- Easy to access & navigate
- No need to use physical tapes
- Handles large backups efficiently
- Cost effective solution that is responsive and good to work with
CHALLENGES
VSAC (Vermont Student Assistance Corporation) handles 43,000 borrowers annually. In 2021 they serviced 610 million dollars in federal and private loans. They awarded 26.9 million dollars in grants and scholarships in the same year. With the large amount of data their company generates, efficiency in their backup operations is necessary.
“During the week we back up about 1 – 2 TB nightly, Monday through Friday, and 3.2 TB on Saturday. We also back up 3.2 TB monthly,” says Rosanne Nelson, VSAC’s Operations and Infrastructure Manager. “We used physical tapes and had to store at an off-site storage company so we wanted to move to digital backup.”
SOLUTION
In order to handle its large backup volume, VSAC decided on switching from using manual tape to using ViTL, LaserVault’s virtual tape backup and recovery solution for IBM Power Systems.
ViTL ensures backups run smoothly, and acts as a gateway between the IBM i and ExaGrid, the deduplication system used by VSAC. ViTL also saves costs by eliminating line items for tapes and storage management, an important consideration when it comes to annual budgeting.
Technology partners, ExaGrid and LaserVault, have joined in providing ExaGrid’s IBM i customers with cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup systems for over 10 years.
SUMMARY
“We find ViTL to be good to work with and responsive to our needs. The ViTL site is easy to access and navigate. Overall it’s working well for us.”
“Our experience with LaserVault has been fine, and the support we received on a recent issue was helpful and informative. The ViTL support representative was on various calls with us as we worked out an issue with Exagrid,” said Rosanne.
VSAC rates LaserVault ViTL a solid 9 out of 10 when it comes to recommending to other users.
