Case Studies
University of Leicester Case Study
24 Aug 2021
Executive Summary
The University of Leicester has been relying on Macrium Software backup and imaging technology since 2010. We asked Mark Penny, the University of Leicester IT Department System Specialist, to share their story, and why they have been trusting Macrium Reflect to protect their environment for the last 9 years.
“From my perspective, what really made a step forward, was the central Management console when that came in because it’s something which I was particularly keen on.”
Mark Penny
University of Leicester
From personal use to one of the most prestigious universities in the UK
Based on a great personal experience with Macrium solutions, Mark made a recommendation to implement Macrium Reflect as a solution to protect critical data and systems for the University when they were searching for a solution to address a particular series of problems.
How did Macrium help?
Macrium Site Manager helped The University of Leicester to address a need for a single point of administration for their enterprise backup system and ability to quickly deploy a backup solution to multiple endpoints.
The Site Manager dashboard is customizable, enabling you to prioritise the display of relevant metrics and alerts.
“From my perspective, what really made a step forward was the central management console (Site Manager) when that was released in 2017, because it’s something which I was particularly keen on given the particular use I’ve got for Macrium. In other words, it provides me with bare-metal recovery. In the event that we lost a data centre, and I had no servers left, I will need to be able to get my environment back quickly. Macrium Reflect provides me with that bare-metal restore capability. Being able to see (at a glance) in Site Manager that our backups are scheduled, I know everything’s running nicely. The ease at which I can quickly deploy agents and manage our repositories is a big plus.”
Macrium Site Manager makes it easier to spot failing backups and provides an administrator with the tools to quickly identify problems. Backup definitions are easy to create as well as assigning schedules and retention policies, and managing backup repositories. It includes comprehensive event management, alerts and security logging. The architecture builds on commonly used Microsoft Windows technologies and requires no specialist skills to install and configure.
Ransomware Protection
Macrium Image Guardian prevents unauthorised modifying of Macrium backup files on local and USB volumes so they cannot be encrypted by ransomware. If the worst happens, the backups can be entirely recoverable. Unlike antivirus software products, MIG is focussed on the single task of protecting Macrium files. It has a small footprint and will not impact the performance of your PC and protects your backup data from unauthorised modification.
The UK is experiencing a growing number of ransomware attacks on Universities. In 2018, there were more than 850 attacks across the academic year, aimed at almost 190 universities and colleges. This was up from fewer than 600 attacks on about 140 institutions in 2017.1 Most attacks on UK universities were related to phishing and attempts to gain entry for ransomware and malware.2
“I really like Macrium Image Guardian: It’s certainly worth installing Macrium Reflect on your storage server to provide protection of your backup images; because they effectively are your get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s worth a license just to protect them with MIG because if you get a ransomware or encryption malware attack it provides you with a safety net.”
Results
Macrium Reflect and Site Manager provide Leicester University with an extra layer of DR protection in case of a hardware or system failure. The ability to perform bare-metal restores in case of disaster provides the team peace of mind and the ability to recover from the worst disaster. Management is easy with Site Manager, and Macrium Reflect is a very reliable and efficient backup tool.
Would you recommend Macrium?
“Yes! I tell other IT professionals about Macrium and how we use it as a reliable tool to provide bare metal restores to any hardware.”