UCLouvain reduces IT infrastructure costs by emulating physical tape libraries on existing commodity hardware with StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL)

CHALLENGE

Before deploying StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL), UCLouvain relied on a SAN-based infrastructure running on Hyper-V and KVM. While the environment supported academic services and research projects, the cost of proprietary SAN systems remained a persistent challenge. Expanding storage for growing data volumes – especially backups – meant significant investments. Physical tape was no longer practical for timely recovery, yet alternatives often required disruptive infrastructure changes. The IT team needed a way to modernize their backup strategy, improve recovery times, and keep costs under control while still relying on their existing hardware and virtualization platforms.

Thanks to the StarWind solution, mission-critical services for students, faculty, and staff remain operational even in the event of hardware failures.

Infrastructure IT Manager

SOLUTION

UCLouvain chose StarWind VTL because it allowed the institution to emulate physical tape libraries on commodity hardware, providing a cost-efficient and scalable backup solution that integrated smoothly with both Hyper-V and KVM. By replacing expensive SAN expansion and outdated tape handling, the university gained faster backup and recovery performance, reduced storage costs, and simplified management. The solution ensured high availability for critical services, streamlined monitoring for the IT team, and supported seamless growth as storage demands increased. Today, UCLouvain continues to benefit from StarWind VTL’s ability to bridge traditional tape workflows with modern, reliable, and economical storage.