Chun Wo ensures data resilience with rapid migration and backup across traditional servers and Kubernetes with Veeam

As an acclaimed contractor and developer in Asia, Chun Wo has undertaken many major public construction endeavors in Hong Kong, including bridges, roads, and other urban development projects.

Chun Wo requires stable, round-the-clock access to the company’s business systems and data to maintain smooth operations and ensure construction doesn’t stop. Chun Wo’s IT systems were on-premises, which required substantial resources for software development, testing, and release.  As the company’s business expanded and its IT needs grew, Chun Wo embarked on its DevSecOps modernization journey by leveraging Kubernetes to build a hybrid cloud environment that could provide greater development and operational flexibility.

"There has been a long-standing IT talent shortage,” said Samuel Kwok Cheung Hon, Head of IT at Chun Wo. “We knew we needed to modernize our infrastructure to reduce manpower and shorten development time for new projects. By modernizing our infrastructure, our engineers on the IT team can focus more on value-adding tasks.”  

Previously, Chun Wo used virtual machines (VMs) such as Docker to run containerized applications. After the switch to Kubernetes, data security became one of Chun Wo’s primary concerns. As Kubernetes relied on many open-source tools that increased security risks, Chun Wo needed to reinforce the security protection of its IT systems.

Chun Wo looked to employ a powerful backup and recovery solution to keep security and business continuity at the forefront.

“When we started using Kubernetes as our new development and production platform, the biggest challenges we faced was how to enable smooth backup and recovery, ensure business continuity, and facilitating flexible and reliable application mobility,” said Hon. 

Chun Wo has worked with Veeam to back up and safeguard its on-premises servers for nearly a decade. Building on its positive experiences with the Veeam Data Platform, Chun Wo chose to deploy Veeam Kasten to enhance data protection and application recovery for Kubernetes, a crucial part of its DevSecOps infrastructure modernization journey.

"We have been using Veeam for quite some time and have developed a strong level of trust in its solutions. The exceptional support provided by Veeam has solidified its reputation at Chun Wo,” said Hon. “In the past, we utilized Veeam Backup & Replication when the core hardware ERP system of our corporate group failed. Thanks to Veeam's backup capabilities, we were able to restore the entire system within four hours, successfully meeting our company’s service level agreement (SLA) requirements.”

For DevSecOps transition workflows, Veeam Kasten can automate and streamline the deployment process by inserting the data protection policy into the CI/CD pipelines, which helps eliminate the complexity of policy guardrails. Plus, Veeam Kasten’s intelligent UI allows users to convert Kubernetes YAML configurations more efficiently. As a result, Chun Wo can speed up its new deployment and digital transformation process, saving time and manpower in DevSecOps.

Since Chun Wo uses several different platforms, adopting Veeam Kasten means that it can rely on a single vendor to realize data protection for both their traditional servers and Kubernetes clusters, which translates into simpler management. On top of that, Veeam Kasten is a native Kubernetes application that supports different types of Kubernetes clusters, meeting Chun Wo’s need to deploy its applications across clusters.

“Our deployment requires a Kubernetes-native tool to restore and migrate Kubernetes applications across platforms,” said Hon. “For example, if an issue occurs on one cloud platform, we can quickly migrate our applications and data to another cloud platform for recovery to reduce potential impact effectively.”

"If our Kubernetes applications run into problems, we can switch to another platform with Veeam Kasten in a shorter amount of time,” Hon said. “It used to require several days or even a week to migrate our applications to another platform. Now, the whole migration process only takes a few minutes.”

As Veeam Kasten supports diverse platforms like various hypervisors and Kubernetes versions, the Chun Wo team can reuse any resources and choose different storage tools across their on-premises servers and cloud environments. This way, Chun Wo can minimize its initial investment and save operational costs.

Additionally, by leveraging Veeam’s AI testing capabilities, Chun Wo conducts regular annual tests to validate the quality of its backup and DR mechanisms. These tests enable Chun Wo to meet its SLA requirements.

• Provides a comprehensive data protection and backup solution across traditional databases and Kubernetes.
  Veeam meets Chun Wo’s need for high flexibility by supporting diverse platforms.
  “In the past, it was challenging to back up traditional databases and Kubernetes at the same time, but now we can rely on Veeam to realize unified backup.”
  
• Reduces Kubernetes cluster migration time from days to hours.
  Veeam supports quick data and application recovery by enabling rapid cross-platform migration to reduce impact on business. “It used to require several days or even a week to migrate our applications to another platform. Now, the whole migration process only takes a few minutes.”
• Enables flexible cross-platform data storage and application mobility.
  Veeam enables Chun Wo to rely on a single vendor to transfer data on both traditional servers and Kubernetes clusters. "Our company uses multiple platforms, so being able to use Veeam Kasten to support flexible cross-platform data transfers is a big plus."