MPISD Propels Student Learning While Never Having to Worry About Backups With Druva

Mount Pleasant Independent School District, located in Mount Pleasant, Texas, is a K-12 public school district comprising four elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools. It boasts a dedicated staff of 1,000 employees committed to serving 5,000 students.

Noe Arzate is the Chief Technology Officer for Mount Pleasant Independent School District (MPISD). He oversees everything that has to do with technology for the district, including operations, infrastructure, and instructional technology. He is also responsible for the district’s cybersecurity planning and posture, working closely with the district’s safety director and in-house police department. 

Arzate’s team of 11 individuals oversees the management of various crucial components within the organization. This includes its Microsoft 365 instance, VMware, Windows and SQL servers, NAS storage, as well as help desk, network, and cyber security operations. For Arzate, cybersecurity is always a top concern. 

A few years ago, he began contemplating the necessary steps to recover from potential cybersecurity incidents. Initially, he considered establishing a disaster recovery site in a separate location from the main data center. His intention was to utilize the existing data protection software, deploy new volumes in the cloud using cloud services, and subsequently back up the on-premises volumes to the cloud. However, he soon realized that collaborating with multiple vendors to execute this plan would present significant challenges.

Arzate said he started to investigate a solution that would help him “quickly recover in the event of not just a physical disaster, but also ransomware or something similar that would disrupt our services.” While there was a legacy backup solution in place, he wasn’t willing to have a bolted-together solution, “especially when dealing with disaster.”

Arzate began to look for a proven solution he could rely on — one that was simple to use. He didn’t want to scramble to figure out how to restore systems if the worst happened. In his words, “I just wasn't going to take a chance.”

After examining different options, Arzate made the decision to choose Druva to protect MPISD’s environment because of “how simple Druva was to deploy, implement, and leverage cloud services in the event of a disaster."

The team uses Druva for SaaS Apps for its Microsoft 365 and Druva’s Hybrid Workloads to support their ability to recover VMware, Windows, NAS, and SQL servers in the public cloud. They have also deployed Druva’s cloud disaster recovery capabilities to easily recover VMware virtual machines in AWS.

When Druva was first deployed, Arzate tested it to be sure it could back up the organization’s on-premises and Microsoft 365 data and recognized this was a quick and easy process. 

However, Arzate’s main reason for switching data protection providers was to find a solution the team could rely on that was easy to use and enabled a quick recovery from anything that disrupted services. He found that in the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud. 

Arzate quickly saw the benefits of Druva and its single-look dashboard to provide insight into the status of backups, restore jobs, and more. He especially appreciates how this helps him understand what’s going on in the environment even though he’s not managing them day-to-day. 

Since deploying Druva, MPISD’s security posture has improved “quite a bit” according to Arzate. Critical systems are being backed up off-site in a secure location giving his team the ability to retrieve those backups in just a matter of minutes without a major disruption to the continuity of services the team provides for staff, students, and the district.

This gives Arzate peace of mind because he knows if something bad happens his team is prepared to deal with it. He said, “Having a disaster recovery backup initiative or solution in place plays a key role when it comes to security." Having a quick recovery solution eliminates the need to worry about paying ransomware or struggling to locate your systems and backups. 

Arzate recognizes that even if a desired feature is missing from the platform, it is actively being developed. That's why, when he came up with the idea of having an AI advisor to help locate specific files or backups, he knew that Druva would inevitably unveil a feature like Dru, the platform’s new AI copilot.

Arzate now appreciates the assurance that comes with having a cloud-native data protection system in place for the Mount Pleasant Independent School District. “I know that I made the right decision to go with Druva to protect our data in the cloud because of the technology behind it, how simple it was to deploy and implement it, and the ability to leverage cloud services in the event of a disaster.“