National Association of Independent Schools Enlists Veeam

Veeam Software, Inc. announced the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), a Washington, DC based nonprofit membership association serving as the national voice of independent education, is using Veeam to enable data center availability.

Faced with an under-performing backup and DR system, regularly occurring IT management and maintenance problems, and shortfalls in customer support, NAIS replaced its prior technology with Veeam Backup & Replication v8, allowing it to overcome these issues and eliminate IT headaches.

NAIS provides services to more than 1,800 schools and associations of schools in the US and abroad, including more than 1,500 independent private K-12 schools. NAIS advocates on behalf of its members, while offering research and trend analysis, leadership and governance guidance, and professional development opportunities for school leaders and board members. Members regard NAIS as an invaluable organization for timely information and best practices, and its prior under-performing backup and DR systems not only frustrated the association’s IT department and staff, but also threatened the delivery of critical services to its members.

“Backup, replication and recovery were excruciatingly slow, and even installing software and agents was never problem-free. It created a nightmare for our IT staff,” said the senior director for network systems and operations, NAIS, George Mendel. “We had been using site replication at the SAN level to an external vendor, but it was spotty and sometimes didn’t replicate at all, making management and maintenance difficult. We had an Acronis backup solution which from the start was not easy to install or configure. Ongoing errors kept us on the phone with tech support constantly. These were all functions that should have been running with no incidents. As a result, we decided to replace that system right away.“

NAIS had already been using Veeam Cloud Connect to manage multiple private clouds, enabling them to speed-up information delivery and data replication for backups and DR. When researching a replacement for their backup and DR system, they tested a trial version of Veeam Backup & Replication v8 which installed in a matter of minutes.

It provides fast, flexible, and reliable recovery of virtualized applications and data. The solution leverages virtualization, storage, and cloud technologies to deliver recovery time and point objectives (RTPO) of less than 15mn for all applications and data by providing capabilities in high-speed recovery, data loss avoidance, verified protection, leveraged data and complete visibility.

After experiencing the power and ease-of-use of the trial version, NAIS deployed Veeam Backup & Replication v8 Enterprise Edition in December, 2014.

According to Mendel, the deployment was ‘flawless,’ and, immediately, regularly scheduled backups kicked-in with no issues.

Replication to their vendor, OffSiteDataSync, also went off without a hitch.

The few times tech support was required, issues were resolved in a matter of minutes.

“We set it up easily and to this day it all runs very nicely – all we do is take care of our monthly tests for replications and backups,” continued Mendel. “Veeam delivered on all its promises and now we can do more than we imagined. We’ve got the reliability we need and real data center availability that enables our staff to focus on its mission of serving members. We also have control; no more IT nightmares or time-consuming troubleshooting.“

“For organizations like NAIS, their main focus is to support their customers, and for those with a global presence, that support must be available 24×7. They can no longer worry that the data center might not be available – the bar today is set at ‘always-on’,” said Doug Hazelman, VP of product strategy, Veeam. “We provide RTPOs of 15 minutes or less and the assurance that, if a key application goes down, IT will be able to recover quickly. As for IT, they shouldn’t be bogged down by troubleshooting – they also have work to do – so our goal is to provide them with the reliability and ease-of-use they need to ensure their personnel are supported by the best technology possible.“