NAKIVO Saves High School $8,000 in 2020
Business Challenge
Lady of Providence High School is an inter-parochial, co-educational secondary school located in Clarksville, Indiana, serving Southern Indiana. The school was founded in 1951 and is operated by the Sisters of Providence. As a life-prep school, the school offers a diverse liberal arts course of study with a strong focus on college preparation and advanced dual credit coursework.
Providence High School has only one site with four physical servers and 15 virtual machines that vary in nature. These machines include a Linux website host, a Microsoft Active Directory server, a file server, a print server, an application deployment server, a physical security management server, a student information system server, a financial services server, a helpdesk, and other specific service servers. Student data is difficult to collect and must be retained for a long time in order for the school to deliver teaching services to its students. Without access to student data, Providence High School risks losing students’ contact information, grades, and official transcripts. Thus, a student information system server is critical and must be available. Moreover, financial data is also critical, as parents trust the school to accurately collect and apply tuition fees, while faculty and staff depend on this data for their salaries. Without access to financial records, the school would have difficulty figuring out what was paid and what is outstanding.
In the past, the school used a cloud solution from another vendor. The product had several disadvantages, including failed backup jobs, which were difficult to troubleshoot and then run. A hybrid appliance was not properly sized and the school outgrew its capabilities sooner than expected. In addition, that solution required a backup agent, which would sometimes slow down virtual machines even when backup jobs were not running. When the service contract was approaching renewal time, the school was faced with lower enrollment and the challenge to reduce their IT budget. Continuing with that product was no longer possible, due to sizing challenges and costs associated with upgrading the solution.
Solution
The IT team decided to replace the school’s previous solution with NAKIVO Backup & Replication. The biggest factors that led to that decision were affordable pricing and support for FreeNAS. Providence High School also wanted to improve VM backup speed and avoid wasting time on troubleshooting failed backup jobs. Backing up VMs without any failures and backing up VMs without the need of agents are huge advantages. Moreover, being able to not only back up the student data reliably and quickly, but also recover that data instantly, in case of an issue, is also an added benefit.
“We chose NAKIVO Backup & Replication because the solution is agentless, works with different hypervisors, and integrates with different NAS servers. In addition, NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports not only our virtual environment but also our physical servers,” says Jack Riddle, IT Manager at Providence High School.
“I enjoy the flexibility of the NAKIVO Backup & Replication and FreeNAS combination, as the deployment process went smoothly and quickly. The integration is easy and I do not need additional hardware to host backups. The web interface is clean and I can easily find exactly what I’m looking for. In the future, I plan to upgrade the hardware with enterprise drives, so the performance would be even better. Overall, a VM backup appliance that combines NAKIVO Backup & Replication and FreeNAS improves backup performance, saves storage space, and handles backups more efficiently,” says Jack.
The school also found the affordability of NAKIVO Backup & Replication to be impressive. “With the relatively affordable pricing of NAKIVO Backup & Replication and not having to purchase any additional hardware or storage servers, we were able to realize our goal of reducing backup costs without sacrificing any functionality and even improving the level of data protection. NAKIVO Backup & Replication helped us save $8,000 this year and we’re likely to save an additional $1,300 every year going forward,” says Jack.
Providence High School also takes advantage of the additional functionality that NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers, including Active Directory integration, global data deduplication, and backup copy. “Global data deduplication is a huge cost saver for us when it comes to cloud backups, as the data footprint is definitely smaller. Integration with Microsoft Active Directory simplifies user management, as one less login to remember is always a nice touch. In the near future, we are planning to implement backup copy functionality to have an additional copy of our backups in the cloud,” says Jack.
Results
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication installed on FreeNAS, Providence High School ensures availability of student data with reliable backup and recovery, improves backup performance, and saves on backup costs. Installation on FreeNAS provides the school with faster VM backups and eliminates failed backup jobs. With annual savings of $8,000 in 2020 and additional savings of $1,300 each year going forward, the school has already seen savings in backup costs and these funds can be used for the school’s future projects.
“With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, our VM backups are now successful, predictable, and run smoothly. Integration with FreeNAS helped us save costs, reduce storage space, and handle backups more efficiently. Annual savings from switching to NAKIVO Backup & Replication will be used appropriately for other school activities,” says Jack.
About Providence High School
Lady of Providence High School is an inter-parochial, co-educational, secondary school located in Clarksville, Indiana, serving Southern Indiana. The school works to implement the school’s mission and philosophy through a four-year theology program, a campus ministry program, a service learning program, and four-year retreat and reflection programs, as well as penance services, liturgies, assemblies, and daily prayer. Students also have the opportunity to become ministers of the Eucharist, Word, music, and hospitality. For more information, visit www.providencehigh.net.