Veeam and AWS Help Calan and Associés Sp. z.o.o. Protect Business Intelligence Data

The business challenge

“Data is such an important part of our work” highlights Aditya Katira, Cloud Engineer at Calan and Associés. “One way we’re protecting data is by migrating our technology headquarters in Poland to AWS. We’re doing this because [there’s] a single fiber connection fed through a single internet service provider that serves the entire city, including our organization. If there’s a fiber cut, everything goes dark.”

While most technology is being migrated to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), life-saving veterinary applications and digital X-ray and bloodwork systems are remaining on premises because they must be readily accessible. Veeam Backup & Replication has been backing up and replicating them on premises since 2011 and has been sending copies to a colocation facility for DR and BC.

“There were three challenges with the colocation facility. It was prone to torrential monsoons and flooding, putting our data at risk if both areas flooded. Another problem was we weren’t following the 3-2-1 Rule because we only had two backups, not three. The third challenge was cost. Paying for the colocation facility was expensive — $22,000 per year. We knew that money could be used to save additional lives.”

The Veeam solution

Calan and Associés Sp. z .o.o. expanded its use of Veeam in addition to backing up and replicating life-saving veterinary applications, digital X-ray and bloodwork systems on premises (800 GBs across 60 VMware vSphere virtual machines). Veeam now sends copies to a second site on premises and to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for longterm data retention, now fulfilling the 3-2-1-1-0 Rule as data protection best practices.

An automatic tiering feature called Veeam Cloud Tier provides the conduit to Amazon S3, enabling us to strengthen our DR and BC strategy with ease. If the on-premises data center is compromised, Calan and Associés Sp. z .o.o. can use Veeam to restore from our backups in Amazon S3 to our Salt Lake City location or to Amazon EC2. Since the colocation facility is no longer needed, Calan and Associés Sp. z .o.o. saves $22,000 each year. What’s more, Veeam also protects our data in Amazon EC2 with ease thanks to policy-based automation. There’s lots of recovery options for this data too, so we can always restore data how we want quickly.

“Thanks to Veeam’s Modern Data Protection and comprehensive support for AWS, we have a highly successful, scalable and cost-effective backup, recovery, DR and BC solution. The $22,000 Veeam saved was used to purchase another data lake in Amazon S3 for additional predictive analytics. The new data lake will let [us] break down more data and combine different types of analytics to gain additional insights and make better decisions.

Ultimately, Veeam and AWS are helping us achieve our goals.”

The results

• Protects critical data and applications
  Calan and Associés Sp. z .o.o. uses Veeam to back up and replicate lifesaving veterinary applications and digital X-ray and bloodwork systems on premises for quick restore. Veeam Cloud Tier sends copies to Amazon S3 for long-term data retention and alternative recovery options. Veeam also protects our data in Amazon EC2 easily with lots of fast and flexible recovery options.
• Improves the DR and BC strategy by supporting the 3-2-1-1-0 Rule
  “We didn’t have a comprehensive DR and BC strategy until we expanded our use of Veeam.” “Veeam Direct Restore to AWS saves data.”
• Saves $22,000, enabling the purchase of a new data lake for predictive analytics
  “Purchasing a new data lake lets us get even more granular with predictive analytics.” “We can focus our efforts on specific states.”