Switzerland's CSTI Secures Data and Business Integrity with OceanProtect Backup Storage

Headquartered in Geneva, Swiss technology company Consulting Software and Technical Informatics (CSTI) provides a range of services to its diverse customer base, including Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) working in the finance, healthcare, government, and education sectors. Hosting and managing Information Technology (IT) systems for customers — entrusted to handle their highly sensitive information — delivers a range of benefits, from streamlined operations and increased productivity, to reduced costs.

CSTI's client list was swelling, meaning that the volume of core service data was also growing, placing pressure on the company's backup system, which was unable to complete backup tasks within the specified window. And with backup hardware having reached End Of Warranty (EOW), CSTI wasn't only facing mounting maintenance costs, support services for devices were also sorely lacking.

Data backup is of the utmost importance, of course, safeguarding the integrity and security of critical data. With data losses occurring due to a variety of reasons, from natural disasters and cyber-attacks, to hardware failures, human error, and viruses, businesses must be equipped with the tools that allow them to return to normality and resume operations as quickly as possible. And it's backup storage that helps quickly recover lost data and ensure business continuity.

CSTI chose high-capacity Huawei OceanProtect X8000 backup storage, designed for enterprise-level environments. Complying with strict data storage and retention regulations, the solution's scalable architecture can support up to 8 PB of data, making it a great fit for large organizations that require vast amounts of storage space. The system is also equipped with advanced data protection features such as Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) and Erasure Code (EC) technology, ensuring data integrity and availability. OceanProtect X8000 uses high-speed Storage Area Network (SAN) Attached Storage (SAS) and Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) Solid-State Drives (SSDs), allowing for fast data transfer rates and low latency. Additionally, the storage system comes with a range of management tools and monitoring capabilities, making it easy to maintain.

CSTI Solution

With two data centers in separate physical locations, CSTI chose Huawei OceanProtect X8000 as its backup area storage, one for each data center implementing HyperReplication between the two data center locations. (HyperReplication is a remote replication feature developed by Huawei.) Using backup software from Veeam, this layout uses a scale-out repository to optimize backup performance and data reduction, a best practice learned through real-world deployment of the OceanProtect solution,

Indeed, the solution provides a range of features, including incremental backup of 48 TB capacity SSDs — meeting the daily needs of CSTI's customers — and versioning and advanced encryption protocols to ensure the security and integrity of user data. After implementation, 10 GB/s writing speed was consistently achieved, dramatically reducing the backup window from 8 hr to just 3 hr and significantly boosting performance, which increased from 9 TB/h on the legacy system to 26 TB/h. With data reduction techniques including compression and deduplication, the size of data is reduced by removing redundancies and eliminating duplicate data. Meanwhile, thin provisioning allows for more efficient use of storage space, allocating only the precise amount of storage needed for a particular dataset. By employing these techniques, CSTI has reduced the amount of storage space and saved it for 25% more user data, resulting in cost savings and improved performance.

Additionally, the OceanProtect X8000 backup solution comes with an intuitive, user-friendly interface — Huawei's integrated storage management software, DeviceManager — that allows CSTI to easily manage and monitor backups, view restoration options, and track backup progress in real-time. And with low device and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) costs reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by 35% than the legacy system, OceanProtect backup storage is purpose-designed for businesses looking for a cost-effective, secure, and scalable backup and recovery solution.

CSTI's rapidly growing consulting services and increasing data flows needed more from its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure: namely, higher performance and improved storage capabilities. And with a highly reliable backup solution now in place, data security and data integrity lie at very heart of everything it does. That's something that its customers love.