Case Study: Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative achieves faster, reliable disk-based backups and major deduplication savings with ExaGrid

Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative Gets Smart about Disk-Based Backups and Deduplication with ExaGrid

Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative (LPVEC) is a consortium of seven western Massachusetts school districts that runs a lean, cost‑conscious IT operation. Systems administrator Jake LaMountain struggled with unreliable, time‑consuming tape backups that only allowed a week of retention and required daily hands‑on management.

LPVEC deployed an ExaGrid disk‑based backup appliance with post‑process deduplication alongside Symantec Backup Exec, achieving deduplication rates reported as high as 80:1. Backups shrank from four hours to under one, daily administration time dropped by about 30 minutes, restores (including remote restores) became instant and reliable, setup was simple with strong vendor support, and the solution is scalable—LPVEC plans a second system for additional sites.

Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative

Jake LaMountain

Systems Administrator