Case Study: SUNY Cortland achieves 24x7 availability and rapid VM recovery with Veeam Backup & Replication

University Majors in 24x7x365 Availability with Veeam and ExaGrid

SUNY Cortland, a campus in the State University of New York system serving about 7,000 students (and roughly 9,000 users), needed 24x7 availability for critical systems like its ERP, campus portal and web servers. Rapid data growth (about 25% every two years) and a traditional backup tool that tied up production resources, ran slowly and failed about 25% of the time put business continuity and daily university operations at risk.

Working with partner SMP, SUNY Cortland deployed Veeam Backup & Replication with ExaGrid appliances (backing up ~10 TB across 150 VMs, with replication to a DR site) and later upgraded to Veeam Availability Suite. The solution enabled Instant VM Recovery from ExaGrid’s landing zone, double deduplication to save storage, and fast restores in minutes, eliminating frequent failed backups, freeing 15–30 hours/week previously spent troubleshooting, and giving IT the confidence and time to focus on innovation and easier onboarding of new admins.

SUNY Cortland

Josh Peluso

Director of Systems Administration and Web Service