CUSTOMERS / GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICES

Ventnor City

Cuts restores from 5 days to minutes with Veeam and Scality ARTESCA

The city of Ventnor City, New Jersey is a coastal municipality adjacent to well-known Atlantic City. With ~10,000 year-round residents and nearly 50,000 in summer, the city relies on a small IT team to support eight sites, including City Hall, fire, public works, recreation, and cultural facilities. Critical systems include tax and utility billing, code enforcement, public safety, and citizen-facing services.

The challenge

Ransomware, rising costs, and recovery delays strained city operations

In February 2024, Ventnor City experienced a full LockBit 2.0 ransomware attack that took down every server and workstation across eight locations. While the city could restore City Hall systems, two critical sites — the Firehouse and Public Works — had no viable backups.

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“We discovered we had lost five months of data because the old system never alerted us to issues,”

Jim Pacanowski II

Network Administrator, Ventnor City

At the same time, Ventnor City’s legacy backup solution more than doubled its renewal price. Restore times stretched into multi-day windows, immutability was missing, and the complexity of the platform was straining its one-person IT department.

On a hurricane-prone barrier island where internet outages can last weeks, Jim realized that now more than ever, the city needed a modern backup approach with local immutable backups, cloud replication, simple management, and predictable costs.

That incident forced Ventnor City to fundamentally rethink how backups were designed, distributed, and protected.

Challenges

In 2024, LockBit 2.0 ransomware attack crippled city systems
Legacy backup solution failed to protect remote sites — five months of data lost
Renewal pricing more than doubled
Slow restores (up to five days) and no immutability
Complex system too heavy for a one-person IT department
Needed local + cloud backups to withstand hurricane-driven outages

Ventnor City and Scality

Download Case Study

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“As a one-person IT shop on a barrier island prone to hurricanes, I need backups I can trust — simple, immutable, and ready when disaster strikes. With Veeam and Scality ARTESCA, restores now take minutes to hours instead of days, and I’m saving time and budget I can put back into the city.”

Jim Pacanowski II

Network Administrator, Ventnor City

Solution

Local immutability + cloud resilience with Scality ARTESCA and Veeam

For Ventnor City, immutability wasn’t a nice-to-have — it was the line between recovery and repeating the same failure. To rebuild trust in its backup strategy after a ransomware attack and prepare for both cyber threats and hurricane-driven outages, Ventnor City deployed Veeam Backup & Replication with Scality ARTESCA object storage.

The goal was clear: protect critical systems locally, ensure offsite resilience, and keep operations simple enough for a single person to manage.

The new architecture provides:

Local immutable backups at City Hall, Firehouse & Public Works
Cloud copies for offsite protection
Seamless support for the city’s 95% VMware-based environment
Centralized visibility and simple dashboards
A scalable foundation for future growth, including Ventnor City’s upcoming digital and AI initiatives

Deployment included equipment rollout, configuration, and site-by-site onboarding, resulting in a resilient, easy-to-manage backup environment purpose-built for both everyday operations and worst-case scenarios.

The police department deployed a parallel Veeam + Scality ARTESCA environment for incident reporting, dispatch, and body-worn camera data, further standardizing the city’s approach to cyber-resilient storage.

Solution

Scality ARTESCA immutable S3 object storage
Veeam Backup & Replication
Three on-prem sites with local immutable backups
Cloud replication for off-site resilience

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“Once it was set up, everything just worked. I can see what I need within five or ten minutes.”

Jim Pacanowski II

Network Administrator, Ventnor City

Results

Faster restores, lower costs, and greater resilience that lasts

The impact of Ventnor City’s move to Veeam and Scality ARTESCA was immediate and measurable. Where the city once faced restore timelines measured in days, recovery is now counted in minutes or hours.

“With our old solution, we were once told a restore would take five days,” Jim says. “Now we’re talking minutes to hours. That’s a night-and-day difference.”

Just as important, the new architecture delivered meaningful budget relief. Even with greater storage capacity and a more resilient design, the cost of Veeam and Scality came in 10–15% lower than renewing the legacy platform. That savings helps Ventnor City stay within its strict 2% annual budget cap while freeing funds for other critical security investments.

Operationally, the shift has been transformative for a one-person IT department. Clear dashboards and simplified workflows mean Jim no longer spends hours chasing issues or validating backup jobs, saving an estimated 20% of the IT admin’s day.

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“Before, I could spend hours digging through problems, now I can check everything in minutes and know exactly where we stand.”

Jim Pacanowski II

Network Administrator, Ventnor City

Beyond efficiency, the solution fundamentally changed how the city approaches resilience. With local immutable backups at multiple sites, Ventnor can recover even if internet access is disrupted — a real concern on a barrier island where storms and hurricanes can cut connectivity for weeks. Cloud replication adds another layer of protection, ensuring data remains available even in worst-case scenarios. Most importantly, the city can keep essential services online for residents even when systems are under attack or storms disrupt connectivity.

Finally, the new environment gives Ventnor City room to grow. As the city explores more digital services and begins planning for future AI-driven initiatives, Jim knows the data foundation is already in place.

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“Whatever comes next — whether it’s new online services or AI — we have a storage architecture we can build on with confidence.”

Jim Pacanowski II

Network Administrator, Ventnor City

For a city that has lived through both ransomware and real-world storms, that confidence makes all the difference.

Results

Restores reduced from five days to minutes/hours
10–15% budget savings compared to legacy system
~20% reduction in daily workload, freeing time for higher-value initiatives
Strong ransomware protection with immutable, multi-site backups
Architecture resilient to extended internet outages and hurricanes
Simple dashboards ideal for a single-admin environment

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“With Veeam and Scality ARTESCA, we finally have a backup solution that fits how we truly operate — immutable, simple, fast, and built for both ransomware and hurricane resilience. It’s made a tremendous difference for our city.”

Jim Pacanowski II

Network Administrator, Ventnor City