Description:
Star Group S.p.A., founded in 1995 by professionals already operating in the gift item sector, has rapidly developed to reach its current position as a leader in Italy in the import and distribution of artistic gift items and home decor accessories.
The scenario:
The company is not just classified as an import firm, as since 1997 it has invested in China in the establishment of three joint ventures, and is constantly and strongly engaged in production as well. Starting from 1998, three strategic offices were also established in China, in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Fuzhou, to support the design and development of new lines and to directly oversee the entire import cycle.
In Italy, it owns 48,000 square meters of covered warehouses between Genoa, Silvano d’Orba, and Capriata d’Orba.
The business challenge:
By 2024, Gartner predicts that companies with a cybersecurity mesh infrastructure will reduce the costs of security incidents by 90% and estimates that many companies will be forced to pay 2.7 million euros within three years for the attacks suffered. Hence the clear idea of wanting to preserve data and optimize and streamline backups.
The solution:
Star Group has chosen ExaGrid as an unparalleled, cost-effective, and scalable solution. Installation and configuration of ExaGrid, creation and deployment of four new proxies for the Backup implemented with VeeamV12; rationalization of current backups and backup via Veeam of the two remote sites: this is how R1 Group, which brought to Italy the exclusive ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage architecture and a unique customer support model, has met Star Group’s needs.
Ensuring that an organization’s data is always intact and available for recovery is key to business continuity in case of disaster or malicious attacks. ExaGrid’s exclusive tiered backup storage architecture sets it apart from other solutions for a number of valid reasons. ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage stores backups in the Landing Zone, which acts as a write cache. For this reason, most recovery operations are faster, as the data does not need to be rehydrated or decompressed. They are deduplicated, compressed, and stored in the Repository Tier for long-term retention only when the backup job is completed. Adaptive deduplication is used, which significantly reduces space usage and allows for storage cost savings. ExaGrid’s Repository Tier is unique because it is not network-facing: this creates a virtual air gap for increased data protection as data stored in the Repository Tier becomes absolutely immutable objects. With ExaGrid’s Retention Time-Lock feature, Star Group can now set a delayed deletion policy, so that if cybercriminals initiate a ransomware attack, data stored in the Repository Tier will not be encrypted or deleted, and backup data will always be available for recovery.
The results:
Star Group now owns the tiered backup storage solution that is not connected to the network and has delayed deletion. This ensures, after a ransomware attack, easy recovery of data and Virtual Machines, which through Veeam’s Instant Restore feature can be started on the ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage system, then moved to the actual storage, significantly reducing downtime. With the most recent copy of all backups stored in ExaGrid’s unique disk cache landing area, starting and restoring Virtual Machines is now 20 times faster compared to other solutions.
Statement
“Significant reduction in backup times, by about 30/40%, and simplification of backup storage management are the immediate benefits we have observed“
Antonio Caiazzo – IT Manager of Gruppo Star