Augsburg College Deploys Code42 CrashPlan PROe

Code42 Software Inc., developer of endpoint data protection and management solutions for consumers, businesses and the enterprise, announced Augsburg College has reduced the time spent managing and backing up the college’s data by 80% and decreased its overall storage footprint by using CrashPlan PROe.

Efficiencies in time and storage have led to cost savings for the college.

“The primary game changer for us choosing CrashPlan was the cost-to-storage ratio we could achieve,” said Matthew Galloway, systems administrator for Augsburg College. “With our current data set, other providers had seemingly affordable options. But as soon as you consider the inevitable and continuous growth of our data set, the increased costs of those solutions year-over-year were just too much. CrashPlan provided the most sustainable, long-term option for us. The pricing is incredible for educational institutions.”

Knowing its existing Symantec Backup Exec solution wasn’t providing the efficiencies it desired, Augsburg vetted multiple solutions prior to implementing CrashPlan as a replacement for Backup Exec. In addition to its cost-effectiveness, CrashPlan was selected for its data de-duplication; hands-off, self-managed archives; scalable hybrid cloud; and cross-platform support.

“It is impressive to see how quickly and dramatically Augsburg improved its backup environment,” said Matthew Dornquast, co-founder and CEO, Code42. “Code42 has a long track record of partnering with colleges and universities to help them eliminate the risk and worry of data loss, all while saving time and money.”

CrashPlan Proves Efficient
Prior to implementing CrashPlan, system admin time was heavily devoted to administering weekly, incremental backups across a mix of Windows 2008, OS X and Linux servers, and conducting lengthy, full backups to three tape libraries. Managing backup servers and tape libraries at that time was a constant drain on time and daily resources for the team’s five employees.

And before CrashPlan, Augsburg was using 117TB of physical storage for a year’s worth of data. Now, due to CrashPlan’s de-duplication and compression functionality, Augsburg requires 12TB total of cloud storage – a nearly 90% reduction in its storage footprint.

“Before CrashPlan, it took a lot of extra work to get a truly comprehensive view of full backups,” Galloway said. “I had to compare data sets from different dates, look at file modification dates and even get tape from the vault. With CrashPlan, it’s so much easier, and it saves time-I just press a button.”

Both Galloway and Augsburg’s staff are realizing the benefits of CrashPlan. A staff member recently experienced a file corruption while on a tight deadline and came to Galloway in a panic.

“We were able to restore the file for her almost immediately with CrashPlan,” he said. “When you’re on a deadline, or you’ve spent hours working on a document, the ability to quickly restore a file is so valuable.“