Wasabi, Veeam and Cornell University | Case Study

Beyond the Hyperscalers: How Cornell University Unified Data Protection and Cut Costs

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For IT managers balancing the need for high-performance recovery against strictly managed budgets, the hyperscaler tax – unpredictable egress fees and complex storage tiering – remains a persistent hurdle.

A recent case study from the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business provides a blueprint for bypassing these challenges. By integrating Veeam with Wasabi hot cloud storage, the university’s IT team transitioned from a fragmented, manual backup environment to a unified, automated, and secure architecture.

The Challenge of Fragmentation

Before the migration, Cornell managed its infrastructure using four separate backup solutions. This fragmentation created a significant operational burden:

• Manual Overhead: The team spent 20 hours per week simply troubleshooting failures.
• Reliability Gaps: High failure rates meant business continuity was a constant concern for critical assets, including the university’s on-campus luxury hotel.
• Recovery Uncertainty: Legacy tools lacked the speed and transparency required for modern disaster recovery.

The Solution: Veeam and Wasabi Integration

The college replaced its legacy patchwork with a streamlined combination of Veeam Backup & Replication and Wasabi hot cloud storage. This partnership delivers several critical advantages for senior IT stakeholders:

1. Direct and Concise Integration
   The transition to a single pane of glass management style through Veeam simplified the university’s entire 60TB infrastructure. This integration allows for seamless offloading of data blocks to the cloud while keeping essential metadata in the main repository, optimising local storage footprints without compromising performance.
2. High Performance without the Egress Tax
   A primary driver for the switch was the cost model. Unlike traditional hyperscalers, Wasabi does not charge for egress or API requests. This predictability is vital when data recovery is actually needed; IT leaders are no longer penalised for retrieving their own data during a crisis.
3. Security and Immutability
   To counter the threat of ransomware, the solution utilises Wasabi’s immutable buckets. This ensures that once data is written, it cannot be altered or deleted by external threats, providing a robust “air-gapped” style of protection in the cloud.

Tangible Business Results

The results of this strategic shift were both operational and financial:

• Annual Savings: The university realised approximately £40,000 in annual savings through reduced licensing, storage costs, and reclaimed staff hours.
• Improved Availability: The IT team moved from firefighting legacy failures to focusing on future-looking technology initiatives.
• Near-Instant Recovery: Business continuity is no longer an aspiration but a standard, with the ability to recover data almost instantly across the business college.

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Summary for IT Leadership

The Cornell experience demonstrates that business continuity does not require the premium price tag or the complexity of traditional cloud giants. By leveraging Wasabi’s high-performance, flat-fee structure alongside Veeam’s industry-leading orchestration, organisations can achieve a secure, immutable, and fast backup environment that supports – rather than drains – the IT budget.

For more information on how Covenco can help you implement a secure, cost-effective Veeam and Wasabi architecture, use the form below to contact our technical team today.