Busy Township IT Team Relies on Cove Data Protection
Challenge
The Township IT team is small and quite busy, and was spending too many hours managing backup. They needed to find a more reliable solution that would reduce helpdesk inquiries and engineering requests, freeing them up to tackle other important issues.
Results
Thanks to Cove, Franklin Township’s IT team is saving a lot: time, previously spent investigating failed backups; money, that previously went towards owning and maintaining an on-premise backup appliance; and worry, knowing their backups are working and ready to recover when needed.
About Franklin Township
Franklin Township
- N‑able solutions:
- MSP Manager ,
- N-central ,
- Cove Data Protection
I’ve had two occasions where I had to bring critical servers back using bare-metal recovery, and both times Cove has come through flawlessly,
Robert McQueen Director of Information Technology, Franklin Township
Challenge
“Before switching to Cove, I was spending one to two hours a day
investigating backup failures,” McQueen said. “We consistently had a lot of open helpdesk tickets and engineering escalations, and it never got any better. We have a relatively small team with a lot of responsibility, so we just couldn’t continue wasting so much time. Something had to change. Backups had to work.”
McQueen had already begun using the N‑able N‑central remote monitoring and management product, and was pleased with how it worked. That led him to take a look at Cove Data Protection, from N‑able.
“I had seen Cove at industry events, including GMIS MEETS, and was impressed by the demo,” McQueen said. “I’ve used other solutions in the past and liked that, with Cove, I was not required to have a proprietary backup appliance.”
Cove’s optional LocalSpeedVault provides another layer of protection, but the flexibility of a cloud-first architecturewas appealing.
Solution
Since switching to Cove, McQueen has been happy. Cove has taken away that administrative burden, because it just works, and it has been a huge help in recovery situations. “I’ve had two occasions where I had to bring critical servers back using bare-metal recovery, and both times Cove has come through flawlessly,” McQueen explained. In the first instance, a Hyper-V cluster experienced an error that took down the Active Directory domain controllers, and Cove allowed them to restore everything and get back online promptly. “Bare-metal restore isn’t something I do every day, so I appreciated support assistance from N‑able to make sure it all went smoothly,” McQueen added.
“Backups with Cove are much quicker than other products I’ve used,” McQueen said. “It’s a time-saver, you can test your backups, and the interface is intuitive. The rollout was easier than I expected, much easier than with other products.”
Results
“In an organization like ours, what you ultimately care about is that your backups are working and you can recover when you need to,” McQueen added. That’s why he instituted a policy of testing backups weekly, both using Cove’s automated recovery testing feature for screenshot verification plus manual file recovery tests. “I’m no longer spending hours researching backup failures,” McQueen concluded. “That alone has made a big difference in peace of mind and quality of life, and Cove has consistently delivered with successful bare-metal restores, which is the most important thing.”
Partnership
Franklin Township, in Somerset, New Jersey, supports 350 end users across multiple agencies and locations with a team of five dedicated IT professionals led by Director of Information Technology Robert McQueen. With so many devices, applications, and users to support, they don’t have time to waste on unreliable backups. That’s where Cove Data Protection shines. “Backups with Cove are much quicker than other products I’ve used,” McQueen said. “It’s a time-saver, you can test your backups, and the interface is intuitive. The rollout was easier than I expected, much easier than with other products.”