With ActiveProtect, Northwestern College secures virtual machines that support critical campus systems

Northwestern College required a modern backup solution that combined traditional backup capabilities and built-in, air-gapped protection to provide additional layers of security for their environment. Northwestern’s IT environment featured 55 virtual machines running on three SimpliVity hosts, plus data from a file server totaling 23TB. As their previous backup system required more manual effort to manage and lacked support for air-gapped backups, the team needed a solution that was reliable, cost-effective, and easy to operate without adding complexity to their workflow

After exploring other enterprise backup solutions, Northwestern selected Synology ActiveProtect for its reliability, flexibility, and user-friendly interface. In addition, ActiveProtect included built-in support for air-gapped backups, a key feature that other options only included as costly add-ons. Opting for a unified solution that combined both hardware and software needs into a single purchase, while also simplifying setup and deployment, helped Northwestern modernize its backup environment while lowering costs. 

The IT team deployed Synology’s ActiveProtect Appliance, connecting it directly to the core network using a 10GbE link. Synology ActiveProtect now backs up 55 virtual machines across a Simplivity cluster, as well as data from a Synology RackStation RS1619xs+ file server, totaling 23 TB. ActiveProtect now captures hourly snapshots and performs regular VM and file-level backups, providing both redundancy and fast recovery.

Synology ActiveProtect has helped Northwestern strengthen its backup strategy without overcomplicating the college’s environment. The ability to implement air-gapped backups has provided an added layer of security, especially important in an era of rising ransomware threats. With built-in deduplication achieving a 46% reduction rate, the college has also optimized storage efficiency across its VM and file backup sets.

Northwestern College valued the straightforward UI and quick setup, which minimized training overhead and made daily management simple and reliable. Training on the new system took only one day, and the team no longer has to juggle multiple platforms or manual management tasks. ActiveProtect’s centralized interface and automated backup verification tools helped streamline operations, ensuring backups run reliably without constant oversight.

Northwestern has strengthened its disaster recovery readiness and increased confidence in its overall protection strategy. With secure, offline backup copies, built-in redundancy, and fast performance that accelerates restore times, the college now has greater peace of mind knowing its critical data remains protected and can be recovered quickly if needed.