Brandon Watson: Eden Central upgrades servers, cuts help-desk backlog

Brandon Watson, the district technology staff member introduced by the presentation team, summarized infrastructure upgrades the Eden Central School District completed over the past year and the performance gains they produced. "We went from about 1,700 down to an exact number of 1,471 for the last year," Watson said, describing a drop in help-desk volume among teachers, parents and students.

Watson told the board the district replaced a single, aging storage unit with two servers — one kept on site and a second at a backup data center in another building — to reduce the single biggest point of failure. He said the district also moved from spinning hard drives to solid-state drives, upgraded connectivity from 1 gigabit to 10 gigabit over fiber, and as a result cut nightly backup time from roughly 13.5 hours to about eight hours.

Watson described steps to improve security and continuity: implementing two-factor authentication for staff with elevated administrative permissions using USB hardware keys, and working with a vendor to reduce risk of simultaneous drive failures. He said a Smart Schools plan has been submitted and that the district intends to order Chromebooks soon because RAM prices are rising partly due to increased data-center demand.

The presentation framed the upgrades as risk-reduction and performance improvements: faster access to live data, reduced downtime risk, and more timely backups. Board members thanked Watson for the work and noted the investments appear to be lowering support demand and improving classroom reliability.

Board members had no substantive objections; the district will proceed with the planned rollouts and follow up as the Smart Schools plan is approved.