Data resilience that makes the grade: Bonneville Joint School District supercharges student success with Veeam and Scale Computing

D93 prides itself on always putting its students first. The organization’s IT team is dedicated to ensuring that all students, staff, and parents have reliable access to the digital solutions they need. With limited resources, it’s an ongoing challenge.

“We have a relatively lean IT team serving thousands of users, so the pressure is on to make the right technology decisions,” said Jonathan Voter, Server Administrator, Bonneville Joint School District No 93. “We’re always looking for the best combination of performance, efficiency, and ease of management. At the same time, we have government regulations around data security and availability that we must meet too.”

When it was time to refresh its infrastructure, D93 saw an opportunity to raise the bar and secure better returns on its technology investments. The organization’s IT team was ready to take a different approach.

“We were an HPE and VMware shop, but with licensing costs shooting up, we began looking for alternatives,” said Voter. “Whatever we chose for our computing platform, we needed a complementary data resilience solution that met our high standards while keeping our admin burden low.”

By combining Veeam and Scale Computing solutions, D93 found the ideal platform to support the delivery of high-quality learning. Specifically, the organization elevated IT performance and data resilience while streamlining management.

“I’ve used Veeam for nine years in various roles, but we still did our due diligence and evaluated competing offerings,” said Voter. “We confirmed that Veeam is still the best of the best because it’s powerful yet simple to use and allows us to encrypt and make backups immutable. We hesitated when we found out there was no Veeam plugin for Scale Computing, but our salesperson assured us it was on its way, and we were soon set up for success.”

D93 worked with Scale Computing to ensure a smooth rollout of its new computing platform, before setting up its data resilience environment with Veeam.

“Having someone there during deployment was reassuring, but both the Scale and Veeam solutions were pretty much plug and play,” said Voter. “We migrated 85 servers with approximately 110 terabytes of data to the new landscape and set up backups to our on-premises cluster and Wasabi cloud. We also use Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 to protect data for 200 users. We now keep that data for a year, which helps us recover from accidental deletions and meet our regulatory requirements.”

Using Veeam, D93 can recover data rapidly, allowing it to minimize interruptions to student learning. The organization is taking advantage of integrated security features to ensure that all its data is ready to be recovered as required.

“Quite often, a user will unintentionally delete data and ask us for help,” said Voter. “Invariably, we’re able to use Veeam Instant Recovery to respond with just a few clicks. Our backups are now air gapped, encrypted, and immutable, which gives us great peace of mind that we’re covered in the event of a cyberattack.”

By migrating from VMware to Scale Computing HyperCore, D93 escaped a dramatic increase in hypervisor licensing costs. The organization used Veeam to enable the move.

“Veeam both facilitated our migration off VMware and provided seamless data resilience before, during, and after the move,” said Voter. “As a result of the migration, we avoided a $14,000 increase in annual licensing costs. We can invest this savings into our educational offering, directly benefiting our student body.”

By combining the power of Veeam and Scale Computing, D93 is driving new efficiencies for its data resilience environment and beyond.

“Since moving to Veeam Data Platform, we’ve seen backup times drop from seven hours to just one, an improvement of more than 85%. The performance gains give us the confidence to evaluate extending our Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 deployment to even more users. We know our environment can scale with Veeam without adding complexity, which lets us stay fully focused on delivering the best education possible for our students.”

• Cuts data recovery to minutes
  Rapid restores with Veeam Instant Recovery keep classroom learning on track.
• Enables significant cost savings
  Avoided a projected $14,000 annual increase in hypervisor licensing, freeing funds for student programs.
• 85% faster backup times
  Backup windows shrank from seven hours to just one, boosting IT agility and confidence.