Centralised management and next generation data protection for insurance sector with Commvault

The challenge: Integrity and guaranteed access to information with legacy systems

TIREA provides its services through a secure, unified, replicated infrastructure with all levels of technical and legal support. The information exchange used by the platform is always adjusted to the needs or preferences of each entity, supporting multiple transmission systems (web, ftp, e-mail, Editran, SNA, …), although most services are via the web.

“Due to the nature of the information that is handled, it has a limited validity in time, which is determined by the duration of the process,” explains Osawa. “And, during that period, the system must ensure timely and adequate access to such information.”

Some time ago, the TIREA data centre consisted of “traditional” infrastructure, with dedicated servers and storage. At that time, TIREA opted for a centralised backup solution with an existing product on the market at the time.

Over time, the evolution in the number of servers and the emergence of virtual environments made the unified management of the backup platform not viable. Simply put, the backup software had not evolved at the same pace as the infrastructures, which, in addition, had done the opposite, towards heterogeneous models. “The incidents were continuous and difficult to resolve, and we could not guarantee the availability of the information.”

Commvault: An innovative and different approach

To solve this problem, TIREA decided to undertake the migration from its initial solution to the Commvault platform. “We saw how the product was constructed, and we saw that it was a new approach, both in terms of design and product philosophy,” says Osawa.

With Commvault’s data management platform, the backup system no longer depends on the technology, but is adapted to the needs of the organisation, with specialised agents depending on the hardware, operating system, application etc.

“The information is increasing, and more diverse,” says the manager. “In this scenario we have to progress, and Commvault brings us closer, offering us a full integration of traditional environments and new virtualised environments on the same platform and also, with a capacity licensing (TB) model, much more suited to our needs than the previous model, based on number of customers.”

Multi-site, but centralised backup management

TIREA has started a migration to version 11, in order to adapt to the new trends, marked by the cloud, mobility and new security challenges. In addition, a new data centre is being built to be able to provide services with two data centres, in an environment where, in the words of Nobuya Osawa, “all backup systems will be integrated.”

In short, this will lead to a multi-site coverage, but with centralised management.

The implementation of Commvault software opens up a whole new world of performance in data management. In addition to cross-platform support, Osawa highlights as an example, source deduplication, “which dramatically reduces traffic between clients and the backup server.” The platform also provides storage management, high-level encryption and retention policies, as well as distributed index management, compression or full synthetic deduplication (Dash Full), among many other features and, of course, dedicated agents depending on each system (databases, file systems, virtualised environments, etc.).

Benefits: Flexibility, scalability, security… no surprises

With the implementation of the Commvault platform, life for the TIREA Service Provision team is now a little easier, which is a key factor when explaining to the management the benefits of migration: “We have seen how the daily operation of backup and recovery tasks has become more efficient and, at the same time, more simple, since all types of backup are treated in the same way, regardless of their nature (databases, file systems and directories, virtual machines, etc.), from a single console.”

Another advantage that stands out to Osawa is the coverage at infrastructure level, including physical equipment and virtual machines, for all types of operating systems and different providers. The project manager also mentions the security aspect of the product itself, with second and third automated and cross-linked copies, and of the stored data, together with a notable reduction in management time, simple planning and no surprises in terms of estimated times, copy planning, networking.

“We are very satisfied with Commvault’s solution,” explains TIREA’s Chief Technology Officer, “because it has allowed us to unify our traditional systems and the virtualisation environment in a single backup platform centrally, with coverage for a multitude of infrastructures, and with a licensing model that gives us the flexibility we need in a service like ours.”

In short, after the implementation of the Commvault platform, TIREA now has a truly unified solution that scales immediately and easily and provides efficiency in the management of the backup infrastructure, as well as guaranteeing compliance with the protection standards of data.

And the customers? Are they more satisfied now? “Generally, the customer is unaware of the operation of the backup system, so the absence of comments is considered good news, since it means that the customer does not experience any ‘interference’ in the operation of their production processes.”