Veeam Cloud Data Management Enables Garantum to Adapt to Changing Market Conditions

The Business Challenge

Investing is serious business and missteps can be costly. Garantum believes the most important trait of a financial partner is to acclimate quickly to market conditions and create appropriate solutions. And it’s here that Garantum relies on technology to deliver the best service to its clients.

“Due to the volatility of the markets, the ability to change direction and ensure that we are making the best decisions for our clients is imperative, and IT is critical to our success,” said Marcus Juzwiak, Chief Technology Officer, Garantum. “If our systems aren’t available, we might not be able to adapt quickly to market conditions.”

One system supports stock-exchange connections so Garantum can monitor international markets. Another system calculates risk so analysts can make investment decisions. A third system supports the company’s web site, providing customers with timely, invaluable investment information.

“If any one of these systems failed, we’d struggle to operate,” Juzwiak said. “If they all failed, we’d struggle to remain viable.”

Garantum’s challenge was slow, unpredictable backup and recovery.

“Protecting our IT systems wasn’t easy,” Juzwiak said. “Backup was slow and failed occasionally. Recovery was time-consuming. We needed to change the way we protected data, beginning with the servers in our Microsoft Hyper-V environment and eventually servers in the cloud. The work we do is highly time-sensitive, so unplanned downtime could be disastrous.”

The Veeam Solution

Garantum completely changed the way it protects data and sought a Cloud Data Management strategy with Veeam Backup & Replication as the cornerstone.

“It was clear we needed a solution that would guarantee data availability on-premises and in the cloud,” Juzwiak said. “Our goal was to find a solution that could do its job effectively without us needing to be constantly concerned whether it was operating as planned. It quickly became clear that Veeam was precisely what we needed.”

Veeam backs up and replicates 20 TB across 120 Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs) between two data centers for high availability and to Azure for BC and DR.

“In a disaster scenario where everything is down or out, we can quickly and easily restore our entire IT infrastructure to Azure with Veeam,” Juzwiak said. “Veeam Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure strengthens our BC and DR strategy, giving us a sense of calm.”

Another way Garantum protects data is with Veeam On-Demand Sandbox. The IT team creates isolated environments to test software updates before putting them into production.

“When you can test a software update in a sandbox first, you’re free to fly with no worries. It’s a simple process,” Juzwiak said. “One of the biggest benefits of using Veeam is simplicity — setting up Veeam Cloud Connect between Garantum’s on-prem environment and Azure took less than five minutes.”

Juzwiak said everyday tasks with Veeam are simple too.

“Backup is 96% faster, reducing our backup window from eight hours to 20 minutes,” he explained. “Recovery is 97% faster, taking us two minutes to recover data instead of an hour.”

Garantum relies on two features for high-speed recovery. Veeam Instant VM Recovery helps recover whole VMs directly from a backup. Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange provides instant visibility into on-prem exchange backups. Instant visibility is helpful during item-level recovery when an employee accidentally deletes a mailbox folder or an email. It’s also helpful during e-discovery to meet legal-compliance requirements.

In the future, Garantum will evaluate a Veeam feature that offloads older backup files to the cloud. It’s called Veeam Cloud Tier, and it’s a built-in, automatic tiering feature of Veeam’s Scale-out Backup Repository. Veeam Cloud Tier provides unlimited capacity for long-term data retention by using native, cost-effective integration with Azure Blob Storage, which Garantum uses. Veeam Cloud Tier also works with Amazon S3, IBM Cloud Object Storage, S3-compatible service providers or on-premises storage.

“If you want to simplify life in the data center and be confident your infrastructure is protected on-prem and in the cloud, you should take a look at Veeam,” Juzwiak said.

The Results

• Protects IT systems with 96% faster backup and 97% faster recovery
  “The work we do is so time-critical that we have to be sure our core IT systems are always protected,” Juzwiak said. “Veeam helps us make sure they’re backed up and available so we can adapt to market changes immediately and protect our customers’ investments.”
• Strengthens the company’s BC and DR strategy
  If Garantum experiences a disaster, the IT team can quickly and easily restore the entire on-prem IT infrastructure with Veeam Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure. In the future, Garantum will evaluate Veeam Cloud Tier, a built-in, automatic tiering feature that offloads older backup files to affordable storage. For Garantum, that’s Azure Blob.
• Leverages backup data to test software updates on-premises and in Azure
  Veeam helps companies put their backups to work. The IT team can spin up virtual machines from backups and replicas on-premises or in Azure for testing, patching, application updates and training.