With the new system deployed at the 70 field offices across the globe, these offices can now store virtual machines on their own with faster file access.

"Thanks to Synology's reliable and powerful solutions, UNESCO benefits from a unique infrastructure that spans across 70 countries worldwide, where virtual machines storage runs efficiently on iSCSI LUNs and can easily be backed up. Active Backup for Business, the complete, license-free solution, allows us to centralize and manage all the backup tasks from a single console. Fast and reliable recovery also ensures business continuity."

Chief Technical Officer, UNESCO

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. With 70 field offices spanning across Europe, Africa, United States, South America, and Asia, UNESCO needed to standardize its IT solutions among its headquarters in Paris, France, and field offices around the world. The organization was thus seeking a reliable, secure, and easy-to-deploy solution that can work seamlessly with its existing infrastructure.

Since some of the offices have low-bandwidth Internet connections due to technical or financial constraints, it would take lots of time to access files from the HQ. Therefore, UNESCO hoped to deploy a new system to store the virtual machines on each of their offices for local redundancy purposes.

What's more, they also needed to back up some of their PCs/servers at the headquarters. These challenges and requirements are what drove them to look for an alternative: a cost-efficient and reliable solution that can fulfill their virtualization and backup needs.

Seeking a solution suited to their multiple needs, UNESCO chose Synology to build a new system. Synology stood out because the RackStation servers are much more cost-effective compared to other competitors. Furthermore, Synology's built-in operating system, DiskStation Manager (DSM), provides UNESCO with a reliable and secure solution to manage their data all over the world.

Each of the 70 UNESCO offices uses a system composed of two Windows servers configured as Hyper-V clusters, an RS3617xs, which serves as the LUN storage for six virtual machines, and a 4-bay NAS (e.g., DS412+, DS415+, or DS418) that performs continuous backups of these LUNs.

To obtain high performance, the UNESCO HQ leverages a Synology FS3017 to build iSCSI storage and a hyper-converged infrastructure.

Furthermore, UNESCO used a DS918+ to back up 50 PCs and servers. With the license-free, centralized backup solution, Synology Active Backup for Business, they can now better manage all their backup tasks from one simple console.

About UNESCO

UNESCO seeks to establish peace through international cooperation in education, science, technology, and culture. UNESCO's programs contribute to achieving sustainable energy objectives adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. The mission of UNESCO is to reassert the humanitarian values of education, science, and culture.