{"id":29038,"date":"2019-09-19T14:31:27","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T13:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=29038"},"modified":"2019-09-20T11:11:09","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T10:11:09","slug":"cloud-meets-cloud-in-perfect-disaster-recovery-solution-for-acs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2019\/09\/19\/cloud-meets-cloud-in-perfect-disaster-recovery-solution-for-acs\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud meets cloud in perfect disaster recovery solution for ACS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To enable effective disaster recovery for its own business and to extend the service to its customers, ACS, a division of Altron, has added another cloud to its mix by deploying DR-as-a-Service with VMware vCloud Availability into a VMware Cloud Provider Partner (VCPP). <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACS was formed in 1993\nand is a leading player in the secure electronic transactions market. Its\nbusiness activities provide select vertical markets with the provision of\nelectronic transaction solutions across Africa and is supported by a rich\nportfolio of quality services and products. Today the company delivers its\nservices to customers via a secure cloud environment from its head office in\nSandton, Johannesburg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With data security concerns\ncontinuing to rise, ACS established a business unit within the company,\nCyberTech, that specialises in meeting customers\u2019 cybersecurity needs.\nCyberTech manages the services provided in this environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Challenge<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACS delivers a host cloud,\nsecurity, network and hosting services from its own purpose-built VMware cloud\nand data centre environment, including disaster recovery (DR) services for its\nclient\u2019s transactional electronic card systems. After determining it needed to\nexpand and improve its DR, the company established that it wasn\u2019t technically\nor economically feasible for it to build its own additional data centre and cloud\nenvironment just for DR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you are a DR\nprovider and provide DR services to your own customers who are processing\nfinancial transactional data, you need to ensure services rendered are\nreliable, secure and meet the compliance regulations as well as the uptime\nrequirements of regulatory bodies as well as the customer,\u201d said Mira Andric, Manager\nOperations and Delivery at ACS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are a Cloud\nService Provider (CSP) and we know what building a cloud entails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to\nhave to build a whole new cloud just for our own DR, so elected to outsource\nthis to a CSP that mirrored our business and technical requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe host many of the\nlarge systems for the Altron Group, we also run a cybersecurity division for\nAltron and have a full SOC (security operations centre) and NOC (network\noperations centre). We have attained ISO 27001 certification and are PCI DSS\nLevel 2 compliant, all of which are customer requirements because of the\nsensitivity of the data we manage. We work with large organisations with\nintensive SLAs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a well-oiled\nVMware environment already in place, ACS began discussions with Routed, a CSP\nplayer on the VMware VCPP programme. According to Andric, the decision to\nappoint Routed hinged on the fact it could seamlessly integrate with the\ncompany\u2019s wall-to-floor VMware environment, the level of engagement,\nproactiveness, its willingness to negotiate and attractive pricing offered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACS\u2019 past solution was\nreliant on manual recovery; it was granular and complex. The IT teams wanted a\nself-service solution that they could implement and recover their own systems\non demand without having to file tickets and wait for responses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Running the cloud\nprovisioning and management platform vCloud Director and integrating it\ndirectly into Routed\u2019s VMware vCloud Director platform via the VMware vCloud\nAvailability DRaaS solution, ACS is now able to seamlessly provision virtual\nmachines to host its DR environment. Replication of the environment is done to\nthe Routed systems every hour and every machine that is replicated has its own\nmanaged firewalls within the Routed system. The entire service can be brought\nback in just two hours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe workloads we run\nare massive,\u201d said Andric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t just take it\nto one of the big hyperscalers as the costs would just be crippling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople also forget\nthat in the case of Azure (as an example) you have to manage, deploy and run\nyour own security \u2013 again at what cost? Routed provides the infrastructure and\na self-managed portal that our engineers can log in to for full visibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe also have direct\naccess to their senior engineers, and the system interoperability between their\nVMware vCloud Director and our VMware vCloud Director is completely seamless.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vCloud Availability\nDisaster Recovery solution on the Routed side allows for the replication of\nACS\u2019 virtual machines and full integration of the vCloud Director environments\non both sides. A vSphere replication appliance replicates into the Routed\nvSphere system and self-service capabilities are passed back to the client\nthrough vCloud Director. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The system is also hardware agnostic and ACS is no longer locked into buying the same storage devices and hardware at each refresh cycle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
ira Andric, Manager Operations and Delivery at ACS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Business results\nand benefits<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a financial switch\ngoes down a customer will lose millions and the impact could be devastating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAvailability is\ncritical to the success of our operation,\u201d said Andric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe ourselves have to\nbe available 24x7x365. Because of the nature of the data we manage for our\nclients we also have to be able to answer questions around data sovereignty. It\nis transactional data, so if a client wants to know where their data is, we\nneed to be able to inform a client.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACS migrated over 30\nTB of (backup) data over to the Routed cloud during a period of two weeks,\nwhile the full project was completed in three months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cOur goal is to ensure systems perform\naccurately and efficiently with no system down time,\u201d added Andric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe honour our\ncommitment to our customers and strive to provide them with the best possible\nservice and give them peace of mind where data security comes into play.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACS is also assured of\nsecurity across the environment, they can actively monitor potential security\nbreaches and act accordingly. It is running DR-as-a-Service in a scalable,\nflexible and easy to use system that is now a five-click scenario to run and invoke\nDR. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe biggest benefit\nto us is that we have a partner looking at implementing a common layer of\nstorage for storage replication and are open to collaborating with us on all of\nour future systems,\u201d said Andric. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause they run off\nof VMware this is so much easier. We don\u2019t view Routed as an IaaS supplier \u2013\nthey are a partner in our business, and we are currently exploring ways to work\ntogether (in the cloud) in the future.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To enable effective disaster recovery for its own business and to extend the service to its customers, ACS, a division of Altron, has added another cloud to its mix by deploying DR-as-a-Service with VMware vCloud Availability into a VMware Cloud Provider Partner (VCPP). ACS was formed in 1993 and is a leading player in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":29039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,338,182,5,19,9059,13,262],"tags":[9710,11098,11105,1496,884,388,11103,11099,4313,11104,11107,11106,1717,5160,2235,11102,94,11101,11100,11109,11108],"class_list":["post-29038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-studies","category-case-study-newsletter","category-cloud","category-enterprise-security","category-regional-news","category-south-africa","category-top-stories","category-used","tag-acs","tag-altron","tag-altron-group","tag-cloud-service-provider","tag-csp","tag-cybersecurity","tag-cybertech","tag-dr-as-a-service","tag-iso-27001","tag-mira-andric","tag-network-operations-centre","tag-noc","tag-routed","tag-security-operations-centre","tag-soc","tag-vcpp","tag-vmware","tag-vmware-cloud-provider-partner","tag-vmware-vcloud-availability","tag-vmware-vcloud-availability-draas","tag-vmware-vcpp"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29038"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29085,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29038\/revisions\/29085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}