Private High School Modernizes IT Infrastructure with Hyper-V Cluster and Azure Site Recovery

Quick Stats

• Industry: Education (Private High School)
• Legacy System: Aging standalone servers with no disaster recovery plan
• New System: Dell Two-Node Hyper-V Cluster, iSCSI Storage, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery (ASR)
• Timeline: Deployment and DR testing completed in 6 weeks
• Key Outcomes: High availability, student data protection, cloud-based disaster recovery, reduced IT burden, continuous academic operations



Client Overview

A large private high school serving hundreds of students and faculty in Florida. The school’s IT team needed to protect sensitive student information, ensure reliable uptime for academic and administrative systems, and establish a robust disaster recovery plan to maintain continuity throughout the school year.

The Challenge

The school’s IT infrastructure relied on outdated standalone servers with limited resiliency and no cloud-based recovery capabilities. Risks included:

• Potential downtime disrupting classes and academic operations
• No tested disaster recovery plan in place
• Exposure of sensitive student and faculty data to loss
• IT staff overwhelmed with maintaining legacy systems instead of supporting education

The Solution

We modernized the school’s infrastructure with a highly available and cloud-ready environment:

• Deployed a Dell two-node Hyper-V cluster with iSCSI storage for continuous uptime
• Implemented Microsoft Azure Backup for secure, cloud-based data protection
• Configured Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for rapid failover and business continuity
• Conducted recovery testing to validate resiliency and preparedness

The Outcomes

• High Availability – Academic and administrative systems run reliably on clustered infrastructure
• Student Data Protection – Azure Backup safeguards sensitive student and faculty data
• Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery – ASR ensures rapid recovery in the event of outages or disasters
• Reduced IT Burden – Centralized, automated management lightened IT staff workloads
• Educational Continuity – Guaranteed technology access to students and faculty even during disruptions

The Results

The private high school transitioned from a fragile IT setup to a resilient, modern infrastructure aligned with best practices. By combining Hyper-V high availability with Azure Backup and Site Recovery, the school gained confidence that academic and administrative operations would remain uninterrupted, protecting student success and institutional reputation.