Val Verde USD Protects Against Cyberattacks with Veeam and HPE Nimble

The Business Challenge

Logicalis listened carefully to Val Verde USD and recommended Veeam Availability Suite.

“We replaced legacy backup with Veeam and significantly improved our ability to protect data,” Penner said. “Recovery speed increased by 98%, so if we find ourselves in a catastrophic situation, we know we’ll be able to recover quickly, avoid data loss and operate as normally as possible.”

“It’s amazing how quickly Veeam restores data,” said Brian Falk, network engineer, Val Verde USD. “Rather than asking someone how badly they need us to restore something, we ask, ‘How fast do you need it? No problem!’ We have full confidence in our ability to do our jobs, and we’re able to do our jobs faster. We save eight hours each week because Veeam is fast, simple and easy to use.”

Falk said Veeam checks all the boxes on the district’s list of requirements beginning with primary storage integration. Veeam is storage-neutral and integrates deeply with many storage providers, including HPE Nimble — the district’s primary storage. Veeam backs up 30 TB across 100 VMware vSphere virtual machines (VMs) from Nimble Storage Snapshots on-premises for fast recovery. Nimble replicates VMs off-premises for disaster recovery (DR).

Integration with HPE Nimble doesn’t stop there. Veeam On-Demand Sandbox for Storage Snapshots lets the IT team create isolated environments for testing software updates before deploying them in production.

“Sandboxing is a big benefit for us,” Falk said. “When our engineers want to test something in Active Directory, we build them isolated environments, giving them full range to completely destroy Active Directory if they need to because we know we can restore it fast with Veeam.”

Another requirement was cloud backup. Veeam provides fast and secure backup, replication and direct restore to the cloud. Val Verde hasn’t chosen a cloud yet, but Veeam can leverage any public cloud provider, including AWS, Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud, or a managed service provider.

Veeam also provides a cloud data management strategy. By taking a holistic approach to data across its lifecycle, Veeam merges the traditional disciplines of backup, recovery, protection, security and management with cloud mobility, visibility, orchestration and automation. Veeam will help Val Verde USD evolve the way it manages data to ensure its always protected and accessible on-premises, off-premises and in the cloud.

“One of the things we like best about Veeam is it can protect all workloads — virtual, physical and cloud — from a single management console,” Falk said. “But we also appreciate that Veeam supports tape backup, which was another requirement. A lot of resellers pushed us away from tape, but Logicalis understood our reasoning: It’s additional security for cyberattacks, particularly in the case of ransomware. Tape is our second media in the 3-2-1 Rule.”

“Veeam plays a critical role in protecting all of our data,” Penner said. “It’s an excellent product that’s easy to set up and configure, but most important, it has a proven track record. Veeam makes our lives easier.”

The Veeam Solution

Logicalis listened carefully to Val Verde USD and recommended Veeam Availability Suite

“We replaced legacy backup with Veeam and significantly improved our ability to protect data,” Penner said. “Recovery speed increased by 98%, so if we find ourselves in a catastrophic situation, we know we’ll be able to recover quickly, avoid data loss and operate as normally as possible.”

“It’s amazing how quickly Veeam restores data,” said Brian Falk, Network Services Manager, Val Verde USD. “Rather than asking someone how badly they need us to restore something, we ask, ‘How fast do you need it? No problem!’ We have full confidence in our ability to do our jobs, and we’re able to do our jobs faster. We save eight hours each week because Veeam is fast, simple and easy to use.”

Falk said Veeam checks all the boxes on the district’s list of requirements beginning with primary storage integration. Veeam is storage-neutral and integrates deeply with many storage providers, including HPE Nimble, which is the district’s primary storage. Veeam backs up 30 TB across 100 VMware vSphere virtual machines (VMs) from Nimble Storage Snapshots on-premises for fast recovery. Nimble replicates VMs off-premises for disaster recovery (DR).

Integration with HPE Nimble doesn’t stop there. Veeam On-Demand Sandbox for Storage Snapshots lets the IT team create isolated environments for testing software updates before deploying them in production. “Sandboxing is a big benefit for us,” Falk said “When our engineers want to test something in Active Directory, we build them isolated environments, giving them full range to completely destroy Active Directory if they need to because we know we can restore it fast with Veeam.”

Another requirement was cloud backup. Veeam provides fast and secure backup, replication and direct restore to the cloud. Val Verde hasn’t chosen a cloud yet, but Veeam can leverage any public cloud provider, including AWS, Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud, or a managed service provider.  

Veeam also provides a Cloud Data Management strategy. By taking a holistic approach to data across its lifecycle, Veeam merges the traditional disciplines of backup, recovery, protection, security and management with cloud mobility, visibility, orchestration and automation. Veeam will help Val Verde USD evolve the way it manages data to ensure its always protected and accessible on-premises, off-premises and in the cloud.

“One of the things we like best about Veeam is it can protect all workloads — virtual, physical and cloud — from a single management console,” Falk said. “But we also appreciate that Veeam supports tape backup, which was another requirement. A lot of resellers pushed us away from tape, but Logicalis understood our reasoning: It’s additional security for cyberattacks, particularly in the case of ransomware. Tape is our second media in the 3-2-1 backup rule.”

“Veeam plays a critical role in protecting all of our data,” Penner said. “It’s an excellent product that’s easy to set up and configure, but most important, it has a proven track record. Veeam makes our lives easier.”

The Results

• Delivers deep integration with HPE Nimble Storage snapshots
  Val Verde USD replaced legacy backup with Veeam to improve data protection. “School districts experience the same cyberattacks as corporations and government agencies, so we have to be proactive and diligent in how we protect data,” Penner said. “Veeam is fast, reliable and easy to use. We know we can recover data quickly if we need to.”
• Recovers data 98% faster (takes three minutes versus three hours)
  “Before deploying Veeam we sometimes had to asked users if they really needed us to recover something because the process could take hours,” Falk said. “Our job is to provide what they need as fast as possible, and Veeam helps us do that.”
• Provides a comprehensive and robust cloud data management strategy
  Veeam protects all data for Val Verde USD by backing up to disk, tape and eventually to the cloud when the district is ready. Veeam Cloud Data Management ensures data is recoverable and available in the event of an outage, attack, loss or theft. Veeam also offers broad data management capabilities and an extensive orchestration engine to facilitate DR readiness.

About Logicalis

Logicalis is an international, multi-skilled solution provider of digital enablement services. The company’s customers span many industries including financial services, education, healthcare, retail, government, manufacturing and professional services. Logicalis employs 6,000 people in offices throughout Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific and Africa.