Brush School District relies on Veeam to keep operations running smoothly and payroll processing

The Business Challenge

Brush School District’s staff and students require constant access to the internet, essential educational applications, staff payroll and student grades. Without internet access, students would be unable to complete schoolwork that relies on online applications. Faculty and staff would be unable to access essential work applications such as email, documents and files. They wouldn’t get paid either.

“If we were to have an outage, it would be a mess,” said Scott Trautwein, director of technology at Brush School District. “Students and teachers wouldn’t be able to access the internet and therefore would be unable to do anything, and no one would get paid. Things would grind to a halt.”

If Brush School District’s data becomes unavailable, teachers can’t teach as efficiently, students can’t learn as effectively and payroll can’t be processed. The district’s reputation would be damaged, potentially leading to staffing challenges.

Because of this, the district’s IT team searched for a solution that would provide peace of mind before, during and after the transition to a new virtual infrastructure. Legacy backup was slow and unreliable. Recovery took days, and recovering from a disaster could take weeks.

“Thankfully we never had a massive data failure with legacy backup, but it would have been disastrous,” Trautwein said. “We would have had to forgo security just to get the internet working. On top of that, restoring everything would take a good week or two.”

The Veeam solution

The Brush School District replaced complex legacy backup with Veeam Backup & Replication .Veeam is dependable and fast, keeping district operations functioning nonstop for students, faculty and staff. Veeam is also affordable.

“Our IT system moved to a new virtual environment, and Veeam wasn’t only the best fit, it was also reasonably priced,” Trautwein said. “We were looking for something that was easier to use, made for virtual environments and more reliable, and Veeam was far and away the best solution.”

Trautwein said the district doesn’t worry about payroll processing anymore.

“We have wonderful faculty and staff — they’re like family, so we have to make sure they’re taken care of and always paid for their hard work. Veeam helps us make sure of that.”

The district is closely monitored regarding funding. The federal government provides about 8% of the district’s operating budget, and remaining funds come through taxpayer dollars.

“Saving money in our IT space with Veeam allows more taxpayer dollars to be allocated to other needed areas,” Trautwein said. “Since adopting Veeam, the district has enjoyed the peace of mind that comes from knowing critical data, the internet, grades and staff payroll are protected, always available and can be restored quickly if needed. Veeam is a much more effective data protection solution at a much better price.”

The results

• Effective data protection with faster recovery, taking minutes instead of days or weeks
  “Recovery speed was the main reason we started looking for a new data protection solution,” Trautwein said. “Recovery took days, but now with Veeam, it takes minutes. Veeam is faster, reliable and more affordable.”
• Constant accessibility to systems such as school operations and payroll processing
  “Ensuring daily operations and our payroll system are always available is vital, so Veeam safeguards those key operations for us,”Trautwein said
• Cost-effective, enabling the district to use taxpayer dollars for schools rather than IT
  “Our IT system moved to a new virtual environment, so Veeam was the best fit and reasonably priced,” Trautwein said. “We were looking for something that was easier to use, made for virtual environments and more costeffective, and Veeam was definitely the best solution.”