Aerospacelab partners with Veeam for rapid data restoration and enhanced security in satellite manufacturing

Aerospacelab’s rise has been meteoric. The space tech start-up’s differentiator is vertical integration: it offers customers a full set of services around satellites. In building its portfolio of services, the company has cultivated unique expertise in its staff, processes, documentation and designs.

“Data is at the heart of what we do,” said Benjamin Colart, Chief Information and Security Officer at Aerospacelab. “Having a compromised IP could significantly impact the company. That’s why as a startup, we have opted to build everything from scratch — including a data protection strategy. Soon after joining the company (almost two years ago), I made it a priority to bring in new measures to better secure our technologies and know-how.”

To add another layer of complexity, Aerospace’s data is growing extremely fast. The company currently manages 650 terabytes of data, and expects that to increase to petabytes within the next year. Moreover, as Aerospacelab expands, it has an increasing range of customer data policies to take into account.

“Our goal is to institute a data protection approach that meets the strictest data management policies of our customers, without limiting our ability to innovate,” said Benjamin Colart. “We want maximum control over data, so we can retain the agility that has brought us this far while protecting against the risk of cyberattack or human error." 

In Veeam, Aerospacelab gained versatile, full- featured data protection capabilities, helping it on the way towards becoming a leading global satellite manufacturer and operator.

“Veeam gives us centralized control and visibility for backup and restore of all our data,” said Benjamin Colart. “For example, we use it to back up all our databases, including MongoDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL, plus our Microsoft 365 environment. We rely on Kubernetes to support our agile development processes for satellite design. With Kasten K10 from Veeam, we get native data protection for our containerized applications, too.”

Aerospacelab adopted the 3-2-1-1-0 rule championed by Veeam, retaining three copies of data on two different media, one of which is stored off-site and one that is kept offline, and checking regularly that there are zero errors after backup recoverability verification. Using Veeam, the company backs up data weekly, monthly and yearly, and currently retains all data as immutable backups.

Already, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 has proved itself an invaluable tool for Aerospacelab. The company recovered a Microsoft SharePoint intranet instance after human error led to accidental deletion of some important data.

Today, Aerospacelab is using Kasten K10 to back up 10 VMware Tanzu Kubernetes clusters. By combining Kasten K10 with ultra-cyber-resilient storage, the company gains multiple levels of protection for its development environments.

“Kasten K10 gives us tight control of data that helps us meet the full range of our customers’ data policies,” said Benjamin Colart. “At the same time, it includes built-in features that accelerate our development processes. For example, we can restore data directly from an archive backup, which speeds up backup testing significantly. The tight integration with VMware — which is a given for all solutions from Veeam — is another great advantage.”

Aerospacelab is now gearing up for the next phase of its transformation, which will include attaining ISO 27001 Certification. As the company continues to win new business, it is scaling up its Veeam deployment to ensure its data — and the competitive advantage it represents — always remains protected.

• Enables rapid, comprehensive recovery of data, reducing the risk of losing competitive advantage. 
  Every satellite we work on represents IP that we’ve developed over years,” said Benjamin Colart. “Both Veeam and Kasten K10 have proved themselves in allowing us to restore deleted data in just a few minutes — they are essential solutions to ensure our ongoing success.”
• Facilitates company growth by scaling data protection measures seamlessly from three physical servers to 700 virtual servers in 1.5 years. 
  Thanks to Veeam, Aerospacelab has painlessly extended backups alongside exponential data growth for two years and counting.
• Contributes to progress towards ISO 27001 Certification, which is expected to raise Aerospacelab’s appeal to customers further. 
  Because our satellites operate in space, ISO 27001 Certification is a must,” said Benjamin Colart. “Our backup policy based on Veeam will play a key role in helping us achieve this goal.”