Case Study: University of British Columbia achieves reliable, cost-effective IaaS, DR and full VM visibility with Veeam

UBC Delivers IT Services to Students and Universities throughout Western Canada with Veeam and NetApp

The University of British Columbia (UBC), a leading research university that also provides IaaS and disaster-recovery services to 26 Western Canadian universities, struggled with a legacy backup tool that was too complex for virtualized environments. The tool lacked deep NetApp and vCloud Director integration and left UBC without full visibility into thousands of VMs and petabytes of research data, forcing reactive support, undermining SLAs, and complicating capacity planning.

UBC replaced the legacy solution with Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Management Pack, integrated with NetApp FAS and System Center. The new solution enabled fast, snapshot-based backups, VM replication, instant recovery, and vCloud Director support while giving unified monitoring for proactive issue resolution and capacity right‑sizing. As a result, UBC simplified self-service backup, established SLAs, reduced downtime, improved RTPOs, optimized resource use, and cut backup costs substantially (about four times less over five years).

University of British Columbia

Mario Angers

Senior Manager, Systems