Located in Kharkiv, a city close to the frontline in Ukraine, this university ended up in the mid of hostilities. In such conditions, it was important to preserve all the services that provide the educational process. Migration to the cloud, free loans from foreign operators and subsequent transition to GigaCloud saved the educational process.

O. M. Beketov Kharkiv National University of Urban Economy is a Ukrainian state institution of higher education of the IV accreditation level, it is subordinate to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. The university has been operating since 1922, teaches 8,000 students at 8 faculties and 37 departments. It cooperates with universities and companies from 26 countries.

Beketov Kharkiv National University of Urban Economy

Task

After the start of a full-scale war, Kharkiv found itself under constant russian shelling. It was essential for O. M. Beketov Kharkiv National University of Urban Economy to continue the educational process and do everything possible for students to finish the academic year.

In addition to educational buildings, a museum and sports complex, there was also a server room with equipment in Kharkiv. It hosted all the services that ensure the work of the educational institution. They include: a corporate information system, a remote learning platform, a digital repository, an automated library information system, an internet conference server, a payment system for scholarships and salaries, access to the Unified State Electronic Database on Education (EDEBO), websites, etc.

Due to possible attacks on the buildings of the educational institution, the first priority was to save the IT infrastructure in order to be able to continue working. They decided to transfer the services to the cloud.

russian troops shelled the university and damaged the educational buildings

Solution

During the war, a number of international operators began offering free loans to Ukrainian businesses for hosting in their clouds. The management of the university decided to take advantage of this offer. Initially, technicians migrated their services to Amazon Web Services and the Dutch Cloud Community. Some services, in particular the distance learning server, were moved to AWS, and the digital repository server and the corporate information system were moved to the Dutch Cloud Community.

The educational institution worked this way for three months. After the gratuitous period, they decided to migrate to the Ukrainian cloud operator. There were several reasons therefor. First, the high cost and issues with payments. Secondly, delays in the operation of virtual servers. Thirdly, difficulties in interaction with technical support specialists.

Having experience of cooperation with international cloud operators and understanding all the disadvantages and specifics of working with them, the technical specialists of the university put forward a number of requirements to the new provider of cloud infrastructure:

  • The data center must be located on the territory of Ukraine.
  • The company must build its solutions on modern equipment.
  • The cloud operator must provide fast and professional technical support.

GigaCloud fully satisfied all the customer’s requirements by providing a public cloud infrastructure based on the OpenStack platform, located at the site in Lviv, for rent. Migration to the cloud was carried out in a few stages. Firstly, the most important services were migrated: the distance learning server and the university’s corporate information management system. Subsequently, the rest migrated as well. Currently, all services work in the GigaCloud cloud.

Pre-war university life

Result

Currently, all employees of the O. M. Beketov Kharkiv National University of Urban Economy work remotely, and the efficiency of their work has not decreased.

The technical experts named the main advantages of hosting in the cloud: the speed of the virtual servers compared to their own hardware and virtual servers of the Dutch Cloud Community, and much lower latency than AWS, as well.

Technical support that speaks Ukrainian is very critical for the specialists of the educational institution. The GigaCloud team helped set up data backup and advised on other issues. Completing a request takes an average of 30 minutes from the moment the ticket is received. Foreign operators responded for more than a day.

The university participates in the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, which analyzes the representation of the university activities on the web, the university’s publications impact on global scientific progress, the comprehensiveness and “popularity” of its web resources, and the trust in them. The future ranking of the university is influenced by the speed of its websites. To do this, they must be hosted on modern servers that can withstand peak loads and work without failure. Placing university sites in the GigaCloud cloud will positively affect its reputation.

“I can’t imagine how we used to work without the cloud,” says Mykola Pan, head of the university’s information and computing center, Ph.D. in technical sciences. Not only did we save our services and continued to work in the conditions of war, but also optimized the budget. During this time, several of our servers have gone down and need to be replaced. Hosting in the cloud has freed us from unnecessary costs that are out of date. We are carefully preparing for the new academic year and look forward to meeting students.”