Ukrainian Capital Bank recoups benefits of cloud data management thanks to GigaCloud and Veeam

The Business Challenge

GigaCloud customers are companies from the sectors of banking, retail, logistics or e-commerce, that value 24/7 data access and application performance. Most of those companies also use virtualization technologies to optimize their business processes. Therefore, virtual machine backup was the number one priority for the service provider. The second challenge was to offer full control over cloud data to the customers. GigaCloud also strived to extend the customer solution portfolio to address the potentials needs of its customers. The service provider offers its facilities as an additional data center for disaster recovery. That is why it needed a solution for the backup, replication of the data onto the cloud and recovery from the cloud.

The Veeam Solution

Veeam helps GigaCloud provide the services and solutions its end users require, in a variety of different industries and markets. For instance, GigaCloud helped one of Ukraine’s leading financial organizations, the Ukrainian Capital bank, to migrate.

“When my IT team and I arrived at the bank, our attention was immediately drawn to the fact that their critical business data was not securely protected. Current procedures and backup plan were not sufficient for reliable performance of IT systems; therefore, we began to investigate and calculate how we could enable all the IT-systems that were responsible for the bank’s functioning to work without interruptions,” explains Igor Balla, IT Director of the Ukrainian Capital bank.

There were two scenarios by which the bank could protect its data: to build its own data center or migrate to the cloud. This challenge coincided with the emergence of cloud providers in Ukraine. There were doubts as to whether the regulator, the National Bank of Ukraine, would allow cloud storage to be used, due to the law regarding the storage of personal data and data protection. It took two years to select the optimal solution: a full risk assessment was required, the regulator’s requirements for data storage had to be analyzed, and the cost difference between creating their own data center and migrating onto a cloud had to be compared.

“Building our own data center would have cost us around half a million dollars, while migrating onto the GigaCloud cloud was 10 times cheaper. For about six months, we analyzed the platforms of various service providers. In response to our request, GigaCloud provided all the information we needed: firstly, the documentation from the National Bank of Ukraine that confirms the possibility of applying cloud technologies, as well as all of the compliance certification for the requirements for backing up our systems on a cloud. They also demonstrated their fault-tolerant tier III data center. We came to realize that GigaCloud fulfilled all our requirements for uninterrupted business, and we began the migration process,” explains Igor Balla, IT Director of the Ukrainian Capital Bank.

The project for creating the backup copies of their business-critical data consisted of two stages: migration into private cloud, then migration to the cloud of the service provider.

The bank originally used Veeam Backup & Replication independently, and in 2016 its IT team used this solution to transfer the files and services from the old server onto an internal cloud, though the data on the latter also needed backing up.

Their experience of migrating data onto an internal cloud made the process of transferal onto the service provider’s platform simpler. Along with the bank’s IT team, GigaCloud specialists developed, tested, and implemented a plan of migration over 10 days.

“We transferred 50% of our servers onto the cloud, mainly business critical applications. In case of emergency at the base data center, they are restored to the GigaCloud cloud using Veeam Cloud Connect in just a few minutes, thus not interfering with the bank’s work in any way. The most important things are the business processes that ensure operational activity: payment systems’ servers, business process automation servers, terminal servers, reporting servers and so on. We have all of them in the cloud, apart from the databases. We have integrated a system of document processing, are in process of deploying a system of business process automation with usage of enterprise service bus for top level API-services, which will also be in the cloud,” says Balla.

Just after the launch, GigaCloud chose Veeam Backup & Replication as the optimal solution to its clients’ business challenges and virtual machines backup. “They suit one another so perfectly, that we didn’t even consider solutions from other competitors,” – says Naumenko.

Veeam solution allowed GigaCloud customers to manage backup and recovery by themselves. With Veeam Self-Service Backup Portal, customers can manage backup policies: set up backup routines for the virtual machines, set backup frequency, and perform other operations.

“The integration of Veeam Self-Service Backup Portal with VMware vCloud Director implies independent backup and recovery management. Therefore, as a provider, we do not interfere with a client’s infrastructure,” says Naumenko.

Also, with Veeam solutions GigaCloud customers can additionally select a required service, for example, Cloud Connect Repository (storage of copies of the VM from its private solution) on the repositories of the providers or DraaS (disaster recovery as a service).

“One of our customers who was using Veeam Cloud Connect did a full recovery with us onto the cloud, stayed with us for a while, then migrated back on-premises. The company managed to avoid any downtime and carried on working,” says Naumenko.

The Results

• Ukrainian Capital Bank is confident in data security and 24/7 Availability thanks to GigaCloud and Veeam
• Comprehensive data management in the GigaCloud cloud: integrating a Veeam Self-Service Backup Portal with VMware vCloud Director allows GigaCloud clients to manage the backup copies of their virtual machines and perform their own restores.
• Provision of additional services: the service provider has extended its functionality, by offering BaaS or DraaS services, all powered by Veeam. Thus, clients can always take advantage of the additional services for a specific business task.