From Risk to Resilience: How SDV Helped a Regulated Healthcare Customer Modernize Backup and Disaster Recovery
The Customer
A nonprofit organization providing innovative support services to thousands of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, mental health conditions, and substance use disorders across the Eastern United States. The organization operates in a highly regulated environment and maintains accreditation from a nationally recognized healthcare standards body.
The Challenge
The Customer runs a mixed Windows and Linux production environment on Nutanix, supporting roughly 45 powered-on systems and 5.5 TB of mission-critical data in a data center. While they used Veeam for local, image-based backups through a third-party vendor, service quality declined following the vendor’s acquisition.
Communication became inconsistent, support felt reactive, and the Customer no longer felt like a priority. There were no regular QBRs, limited visibility of who was responsible for their account, and little proactive guidance. The relationship felt transactional, prompting the Customer to begin looking for a new provider.
At the same time, technical gaps in geographic diversity, recovery timelines, and regular testing became more apparent. As compliance requirements expanded to include HIPAA and the California Privacy Rights Act (CA Light), the risk of maintaining the status quo increased.
The Customer turned to their Tech Advisor to help identify a new Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) provider that could improve recoverability, meet compliance requirements, and deliver an accurate partnership model.
The Situation
The Customer outlined a clear set of goals for the project:
- Replace the existing backup vendor with a more robust, cloud-enabled BaaS and DRaaS solution
- Fast file-and-folder level recovery from the cloud, along with the ability to recover whole systems in the event of ransomware, site failure, or other significant disruptions.
- Work with a provider that offers clear ownership, consistent communication, and regular strategic reviews
- Meet HIPAA and CA privacy requirements with 8-year data retention and immutable storage
- Improve recovery objectives by reducing RPO from 24 hours to 1–4 hours and RTO from 96 hours to 8 hours
- Add geographic diversity through off-site cloud protection
- Ensure all data remains encrypted and immutable
- Perform annual recovery testing to validate recoverability and support compliance efforts
The Solution
Sky Data Vault worked closely with the Customer to design a two-part, co-managed solution built around Veeam Backup as a Service and 1:2:1 Disaster Recovery as a Service, tailored specifically for their Nutanix environment.
- Veeam Backup as a Service (BaaS)
SDV deployed a managed on-premises appliance to support fast local recovery and extended the Customer’s existing Veeam backups into the SDV cloud, where data is stored in an encrypted, immutable format with 8-year retention. The Customer retains access to backups and recoveries, while SDV handles monitoring, management, and day-to-day operations. File-and-folder restores are fast and included at no additional cost. - Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS):
SDV implemented a 1:2:1 DRaaS model designed for the Customer’s mixed Windows and Linux Nutanix workloads. In the event of an incident, protected systems can be brought up in SDV’s secure cloud, with a sub-30-minute turn-up for Windows systems. Annual DR testing is included in the service, helping ensure recoverability and ongoing compliance.
The Outcomes
For the Customer
- Transitioned away from a vendor impacted by acquisition-related service changes
- Improved RPOs and RTOs, significantly reducing operational risk
- Met HIPAA and CA privacy requirements with encrypted, immutable, and geographically diverse backups
- Gained predictable pricing with no surprise recovery fees
- Validated recoverability through annual cloud testing
- Adopted a flexible solution that can grow as business and compliance needs change
- Restored confidence through clear ownership, regular communication, and 24x7x365 U.S.-based support
For the Partner
By helping the Customer navigate a vendor transition and modernize their backup and disaster recovery strategy, the Partner strengthened their role as a trusted advisor. The solution aligned seamlessly with the Customer’s existing Nutanix and Veeam environment and improved recoverability without adding operational burden to internal IT teams.