Kansas University Medical Center Modernizes Backup and Disaster Recovery Strategy

With HYCU and Wasabi, Kansas University Medical Center eliminated fragile tape backups and now restores data in a few clicks—improving resiliency, simplicity, and peace of mind.

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Overview

Kansas University Medical Center is an academic health center housing the University of Kansas’ schools of medicine, nursing, and health professions. To modernize its aging, manual backup system, the center deployed HYCU’s purpose-built data protection solution for Nutanix—integrated with Wasabi’s secure, cost-effective cloud storage. The combined solution eliminated tape workflows, simplified compliance, and made it easy to protect application data across servers and departments.

INDUSTRY:
Healthcare

USE CASE:

  • Backup & recovery

  • Cyber resilience

  • Long term retention

ALLIANCE PARTNER:

HYCU_Primary Logo purple

Challenges

Previously, Kansas University Medical Center used Catalogic and tape-based infrastructure to back up its application data. The system relied on aging hardware, outdated agents, and time-consuming manual processes—making it difficult to scale, validate, or manage backups effectively.

Inefficient legacy solution

Catalogic required outdated agents, manual scheduling, and spreadsheet tracking for every server backup.

Manual tape workflows

Monthly backups were written to tape and physically transported to multiple locations.

Complex, time-intensive recovery

Restoring from tape involved multiple CLI steps and could take several days.

Limited backup coverage

Only ~40% of server data was backed up due to time and resource constraints.

With HYCU and Wasabi, backups just run. I don’t have to babysit hardware or monitor tapes—it’s automatic, fast, and has completely changed how we work.

— Mark Grabendike, Server and Storage Engineer – Kansas University Medical Center

Restoring data from tape used to take days and a lot of manual work. With HYCU and Wasabi, data is available in just a few clicks—and the joint solution works every time.

Mark Grabendike, Server and Storage Engineer – Kansas University Medical Center

Setting up Wasabi in HYCU took little to no time. It was seamless, and support from both sides has been incredibly responsive.

– Mark Grabendike, Server and Storage Engineer – Kansas University Medical Center

We were only backing up about 40% of our data before. HYCU and Wasabi made it easy to back up everything—without overhauling our infrastructure.

– Mark Grabendike, Server and Storage Engineer – Kansas University Medical Center

Solution

To address these challenges, Kansas University Medical Center replaced its manual, tape-based backup system with HYCU’s cloud-native data protection for Nutanix, integrated with secure, scalable Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage. The solution backs up application server data—including Exchange, SQL clusters, and biostatistics workloads—across dozens of physical and virtual machines.

With HYCU, backups are policy-driven and run automatically, eliminating the need to set individual timers or manage agents. Data is securely stored in Wasabi, enabling simplified backup validation, long-term retention, and faster recovery—without the manual overhead of tape management.

  • Backup and disaster recovery – HYCU automates backup of physical and virtual Nutanix-hosted servers, storing recovery-ready copies in the Wasabi cloud.

  • Immutability – Wasabi Object Lock ensures backup data is protected from accidental deletion or ransomware tampering.

  • Regulatory compliance – Protected Health Information (PHI) is secured in compliance with HIPAA and HITECH requirements.

  • Application coverage – Backup scope includes critical servers for critical departmental application server data.

  • Seamless implementation – HYCU and Wasabi were fully operational within hours, and with minimal configuration.

Results

By deploying HYCU and Wasabi, Kansas University Medical Center replaced manual tape workflows with an automated, cloud-based solution that’s easier to manage, faster to restore from, and capable of protecting all critical application data.

The IT team gained time back, improved resiliency, and ensured compliant, long-term storage with less effort.

Money
  • Cost savings – Cost-effective, no-fee storage reduces the cost of data backup and recovery compared to other cloud providers.

  • Full data protection – Backup coverage expanded from ~40% to 100% of application servers.

  • Simplified backup management – Replaced complex, agent-based backups with policy-driven automation.

  • Expedited restores – Recovery tasks that took days are now complete in just a few clicks.

  • Enhanced cyber resiliency – Data is now stored in secure, immutable cloud storage across regions.

  • Easier testing and compliance – Backups can now be tested regularly without effort or audit pressure.

Learn more about HYCU and Wasabi

Wasabi and HYCU provide application-focused data protection for frictionless data backup and recovery.

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