Case Study: University of Ulm achieves predictable, flat-cost scalable backups and freedom from vendor lock-in with Bacula Systems

University of Ulm Rely on Bacula Systems

The University of Ulm’s Communication and Information Center (kiz) needed a scalable, non–vendor‑lock‑in backup solution to protect data for roughly 13,000 users across multi‑site environments. After learning of the University of Hannover’s success, kiz ran a proof of concept and selected Bacula Systems’ Enterprise Edition to replace a competitor product because it offered straightforward, capacity‑agnostic licensing and multi‑site restore capabilities.

Bacula Systems deployed Bacula Enterprise Edition across kiz’s IBM tape libraries, 350 TB disk caches on Solaris 11 and a DR site, using hourly ZFS snapshots and a stage‑to‑daily backup strategy to protect over 16 PB of uncompressed data. The rollout moved from PoC (June 2014) to production (Sept 2014) with all central servers migrated—most work done by a single engineer in four months—and delivered measurable benefits: flat, predictable licensing (no per‑GB charges) that simplifies auditing and budgeting, faster restores from disk, and sustained expert support from Bacula Systems.

University of Ulm

Thomas Nau

Deputy Director at Communication and Information Center