Emind Systems’ Secure Cloud Backup Service Deployed in Global Travel Organization
The Challenge
A global organization – providing software solutions and technology for the travel industry – handles huge volumes of near real-time transactions and reservations. The company was struggling with an inefficient and costly offsite backup infrastructure that was meant to manage an incrementally expanding database of more than 2.8 TB of storage. Regulatory compliance requires that the previous six months’ material must be readily available in a systematized fashion with cross-platform search functionality.
An offsite huge server farm was costly to operate and maintain and the tape backup and recovery methods used were unbearably time consuming. Furthermore, the company failed to meet regulatory requirements in regard to data availability. Pre-boot authentication caused delays in data management and several server synchronization issues.
The Solution
Emind Cloud Backup – as provided to the travel organization – is an off-the-shelf high-performance backup solution that has already been adopted by several dozen companies. It absolutely protects data, files and applications and provides a single point of management for storage and data handling. Emind Cloud Backup is built over the Amazon S3 storage infrastructure and this guarantees data security and data recovery, as all data is encrypted and fully protected by comprehensive system redundancy.
In deference to traditional backup solutions which are costly and take weeks to implement, Emind’s system has minimal CAPEX and can be activated within hours. It is fully non-intrusive as production servers are completed eliminated. The system can be deployed with no interference in an organization’s IT network.
Emind’s in-house tool Sync Manager synchronizes and mirrors directories and volumes on the local network and on remote storage. This tool has multiple functions, among which it employs traffic throttling such that delays can be automatically implemented in compliance with a desired traffic profile. Thus upload throttle and time based throttle are used to slightly delay backup processes and critical traffic is given preference during peak hours.
The Sync Manager also includes an SNMP Agent which provides real-time status monitoring and detailed logging is ensured via Syslog.
All data is encrypted on the fly with military-grade encryption using Porticor’s Virtual Private Data which combines state of the art data encryption with patented split-key management to offer the most secure, cost-effective solution for safeguarding data in the cloud. Porticor’s breakthrough split-key encryption technology protects the encryption keys and guarantees they remain under customer control and never exposed in storage;
Three major issues were completely resolved by Emind:
- CAPEX was reduced to a marginal level with the elimination of the need for an ever-increasing server farm.
- Emind’s Sync Manager provides effective data management, logging and reporting facilities.
- Data security was achieved by integrating Porticor’s Virtual Private Data into the solution.
The Technology
- Reliable: Designed for business continuity, Emind’s Cloud Backup is fully redundant at all levels of operation.
- Secure: Emind’s Cloud Backup data is secured with Porticor’s Virtual Private Data and is always encrypted, while the encryption keys remains under the user’s control.
- Managed: Emind’s over-the-Cloud Sync Manager is a fully monitored and controlled via common NMS systems.
- Robust: Hardened Linux based Platform
- Cloud Storage: Amazon AWS S3
The Benefits
- A secure, scalable offsite backup solution with almost zero IT management overhead
- Centralized management
- Distributed and highly scalable
- Complies with strictest security requirements
- Very reliable with no single point of failure
- Cloud design, deployment and management
- Flexible backup scheduling
- Restore at any level – from a single file
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