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EducationSLEDCase Study

Back to School: What a 250 TB District Backup Modernization Looked Like

Backup windows running into school hours and no real ransomware protection. How a large U.S. school district moved to managed, immutable backup in eight weeks with zero downtime.

Published
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2 min read
Author
KELYN Technologies
Back to School: What a 250 TB District Backup Modernization Looked Like

August is when district IT teams find out whether the summer's projects will hold. One large U.S. school district used its window to replace backup infrastructure that was more than a decade old. Here's what that project looked like.

Where they started

The district serves more than 50,000 students across dozens of campuses, with 250+ TB of data. Its backup infrastructure was a decade old. Backup windows were stretching into school hours, slowing systems while students and staff were using them, and there was no adequate protection against ransomware, which has made schools a frequent target.

What changed

The district moved to datastor.io, managed by KELYN, on a hybrid cloud architecture:

  • Modern data protection for student information systems, learning platforms and administrative data.
  • Immutable backups and air-gapped copies, giving multiple layers of defense against cyber threats.
  • Granular recovery, so IT staff can restore an individual file or an entire system in minutes instead of days.
  • A fully managed service, so a lean IT team isn't running backup by hand.

How it rolled out

The rollout took eight weeks with zero downtime, in three phases: assessment and planning (an infrastructure audit, data mapping and solution design), a pilot with selected campuses and workload types, then a district-wide migration.

The results

  • 90% faster backup windows, so backups finish well outside school hours.
  • 65% less storage needed, thanks to deduplication and compression, lowering ongoing costs.
  • 60% less IT staff time spent on backup.

Ongoing, the district gets quarterly business reviews, annual disaster recovery exercises and continued training for its IT staff.

Buying it as a public agency

State and local agencies and schools can buy KELYN through Carahsoft's NASPO ValuePoint and OMNIA Partners contracts, without running a full RFP. See how to buy.

Read the full school district case study, or download it as a two-page PDF to share with your board.