Challenges Faced

The joint-stock bank faces several key challenges:

• Massive Data Volume: 400TB of data poses a significant burden on backup operations.
• Small File Backup Dilemma: The presence of a large number of small files renders the backup process inefficient.
• Bandwidth Resource Constraints: The high bandwidth demand during backups can potentially disrupt the normal operation of other business services.
• Real-time Data Synchronization Needs: There is a requirement for real-time synchronization of incremental files to ensure the immediate availability of backup data.

Recognizing that traditional data backup methods can no longer meet its growing demands, the joint-stock bank embarked on a quest for an innovative solution to ensure data security, reliability, and compliance with regulatory requirements.

Solution: Information2 i2NAS Data Backup Solution

Information2 i2NAS, with its advanced technical features, offers data replication services from NAS storage to the target end, decoupling data from NAS devices and enabling data replication across heterogeneous NAS devices. This provides a comprehensive data backup solution for the joint-stock bank:

△Solution Architecture Diagram

•  Efficient Replication of Massive Data: The software handles large-scale unstructured data replication tasks with ease.
• Secured Data Transmission: Advanced data transmission algorithms ensure the security of data during the backup process.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: The software supports heterogeneous platforms, eliminating the need for large-scale network modifications.
• Intelligent Bandwidth Management: Flexible bandwidth usage strategies minimize the impact of backups on other systems.
• Quasi-Real-time Backup Mechanism: Implements quasi-real-time backup of incremental files, enhancing backup efficiency and data availability.

Customer Benefits

Analysis of this successful case study reveals how Information2 i2NAS software effectively addressed the data backup challenges faced by the joint-stock bank. These achievements not only confer direct business advantages to the bank but also offer invaluable insights for data backup practices across the financial industry. By deploying Information2 i2NAS software, the joint-stock bank has achieved:

• Significant Improvement in Backup Efficiency: Successfully completing large-scale data backup tasks within the stipulated time.
• Optimal Bandwidth Allocation: Effective control over bandwidth usage during backups, avoiding disruptions to other business operations.
• Real-time Data Synchronization: Achieving real-time synchronization of incremental files, shortening business recovery time.
• High Availability of Backup Data: Ensuring backup data is readily available, enhancing business continuity and stability.

Conclusion

In the financial industry, adopting innovative technologies is crucial to addressing increasingly complex data backup needs. The successful application of Information2 i2NAS software not only enhances the efficiency and security of data backups but also presents new ideas and methods for data management in the financial sector.

The rapid development of educational informatization promotes the continuous deepening of the application of technologies such as AI and big data in education, scientific research, and comprehensive management in colleges and universities, bringing new impetus to the innovative development of colleges and universities. However, the consequent risks of data security and business continuity should be considered.

I. Disaster Recovery Application Scenarios and Solutions

With the profound experience in data security and business continuity management within the education industry, Information2 has launched a series of application-scenario-based solutions, such as data migration, backup, CDP, application disaster recovery and file sharing network disk, aiming at the application data characteristics and disaster recovery needs of campus card, educational administration management system, library system, email system, portal website and file system.

1. Disaster Recovery for Educational Administration Scheduling Online Courses/Systems

Scenario Characteristics: Important data; continuous system operation; frequent concurrent access from multiple clients. 

Client  Requirements:Second–level RTO of key systems; terminal unaware when a failure occurs; no backup time window; small impact on system performance; data loss close to zero.

In the local and off-site environment, build the application high availability capability for the educational administration and smart classroom system based on i2Availability. Through its sophisticated monitoring platform, the system can monitor key indicators such as process status, network connectivity, CPU performance and server health in real time based on the heartbeat line judgment standard. Once any fault is detected, the backup server will start immediately and seamlessly take over the work of the main server to ensure the continuous and stable service. 

Based on i2CDP, provide comprehensive protection for the data of the educational administration and smart classroom system. Whether encountering logical errors, hard disk damage or virus attacks, i2CDP can ensure the security and integrity of the data. When needed, users can easily restore data at any point in time.

2. Campus System/Cloud Migration and Disaster Recovery

Scenario Characteristics: The competent department or the school coordinates the business system to move to the cloud; there are platform-type security risks in cloud data.

Client Requirements: The system realizes online hot migration without data loss; control the security of cloud data and back up the latest data locally.

In the seamless migration and data protection process from the local to the cloud, first, based on i2Move, the campus system is realized to be online hot migrated to the education cloud. Secondly, through i2CDP, the cloud data is backed up to the local machine room in real time. This strategy not only effectively prevents the risk of data loss caused by logical errors, cloud platform failures and virus attacks, but also ensures the bidirectional synchronization and protection of data between the cloud and the local.

3. Disaster Recovery for Database Data of Finance and Campus Card

Scenario Characteristics: High data security and sensitivity; large amount of data, high frequency of query and access.

Client Requirements: Data cannot be lost and can prevent ransomware virus attacks; has little impact on production performance and the data at both ends is consistent.

In the complex local cross-operating system environment, through the real-time replication and synchronization function of i2Active database semantic-level data, the real-time synchronization of the production-end Oracle RAC database to the target Oracle server is realized. This process not only ensures the real-time and consistency of the data, but also greatly improves the flexibility and maintainability of the system. At the same time, in order to further enhance the security of the data, a cascading method is adopted to synchronize the Oracle database data to the backup server in the off-site backup center in real time. The dual protection strategy can effectively prevent the risk of data loss and ensure the integrity and availability of the data.

4. Real-time Data Synchronization and Anti-virus Ransomware for Multi-tenants in Multiple Campuses

Scenario Characteristics: Multiple campuses and multiple machine rooms, frequent data access; scattered network data security risk points.

Client Requirements: Real-time synchronization of data in each campus, anti-virus ransomware; build an off-site disaster recovery center to prevent natural disasters such as fires and earthquakes; ensure the availability, integrity, continuity and recovery reliability of data.

Establish a production center in the main campus and a disaster recovery center in the core sub-campus (or cloud). Through the adoption of i2Cloud multi-tenant cloud disaster recovery management platform, convenient account management is enabled for key systems such as educational administration, student affairs, library, scientific research and campus card. With the help of i2COOPY, the data of the two places is synchronized in real time and ensures the high consistency and continuous availability of the data at both ends. Through i2CDP, the core data is continuously backed up. When the production center faces sudden dangerous events such as logical errors, virus attacks and fires, it can quickly recover through the backup data to ensure the continuity of the business and the integrity of the data.

5. School Multi-terminal File/Shared Cloud Disk Management

Scenario Characteristics: Massive types of data, chaotic management and low efficiency; frequent file copying, repeated transmission and scattered risk points.

Client Requirements: Secure access to files in different places and multiple terminals; collaborative intercommunication, backup and unified management of campus data; multi-level permission management of network disks and recovery of historical data; real-time, convenience and intelligent management of file updates and sharing.

Through i2Share, accounts are opened for teachers, students and school staff in need, enabling them to easily access files on the shared network disk at any time and any place through Linux, Windows, Mac desktop platforms and Android and iOS mobile platforms.

i2Share not only provides multi-terminal synchronization function, ensuring that users can seamlessly switch between different devices and obtain the required files at any time, but also has the full historical version recovery ability, effectively preventing data loss caused by misoperation or version changes. i2Share also performs well in terms of security, with file secure access mechanism, encrypted storage and other capabilities, providing users with more secure and flexible data storage and sharing options.

II. Core Advantages of the Solution

Full-domain multi-cloud platform application

It can be applied in the entire network domain such as campus network, local area network and wide area network, as well as multi-cloud platforms such as education cloud, operators and public cloud, meeting the disaster recovery needs of application systems in physical machines, virtualization and cloud environments.

Multi-level and multi-system backup and disaster recovery

Adopting multi-level data replication technologies based on the host layer, volume layer block level and database, it provides real-time data backup, CDP and application disaster recovery for systems such as scientific research, campus card, educational administration, archives, online courses and finance in the digital campus, and can take over in seconds.

Multi-strategy data management and cross-campus disaster recovery

Campus data can be backed up in real-time or at regular intervals, and database data can be synchronized serially or in parallel to achieve multi-strategy data management and disaster recovery across campuses and from the local to the education cloud, solving problems such as logical errors in storage dual-active. 

Better compatibility and easy operation

It supports various operating systems, databases and virtualization platforms, has good compatibility with the user’s existing technologies and applications, does not need to change the system architecture, has graphical management, flexible deployment methods and easy operation.

Narrow bandwidth, low latency and no distance limit

Based on the real-time data synchronization at the byte level and serialized transmission technology, only the changed bytes are transmitted in real time, there is no backup time window, and the bandwidth size can be set as needed, which is suitable for data transmission scenarios at various distances and meets the requirements of data consistency.

Driven by the digital wave, with the continuous deepening of educational informatization and the significant increase in the value of educational data, data security and business continuity protection have become increasingly critical. In response to this demand and in accordance with relevant policies and regulations, Information2 has launched a series of educational disaster recovery scenario-based solutions, aiming to help institutions such as colleges and universities build a stable, secure and compliant business and data security protection system, providing a solid support for the digital transformation of the education industry in China.

A large city commercial bank’s big data analysis service platform has been online for years, handling key data. With the platform’s rising importance and frequent downtime, disaster recovery compliance is stricter. The bank’s data has grown, causing issues like small file increase and high cold data proportion. If not fixed, it’ll affect digital scenarios. The bank needs disaster recovery for data synchronization and separation to ensure analysis efficiency, data security, and business stability. 

With Information2 i2HDFS, data is synchronized in real-time for disaster recovery, and the backup provides read-only access. This separates reading and writing, boosts analysis, and reduces storage costs.

Founded in 1958, Fuzhou University is a key university with evenly-developing academic multi-disciplines. In order to further strengthen the anti-risk ability of the system, Fuzhou University plans to build a database disaster recovery system, which can ensure that data recovery and business takeover can be realized quickly in the case of system downtime, human error deletion, extortion virus and other abnormal circumstances.

According to the actual situation of Fuzhou University, and through in-depth evaluation of the project, a perfect and executable disaster recovery implementation plan, namely “disaster recovery 1-1-2”, was finally formulated.

A Fusion Solution

Combining with the basic situation of Fuzhou University, the engineers of Information2 suggest to adopt the integrated disaster recovery all-in-one machine and software solutions of Information2,so as to realize the rapid construction and effective management of the database disaster recovery system and make the application system of the Academic Affairs Office of Fuzhou University to be effectively supported.

A hardware

i2Box, disaster recovery all-in-one appliance of Information2 can provide a stable, high-performance, large-capacity, flexible-expansion hardware, and provide convenient, flexible, simple maintenance, cost-effective all-in-one disaster recovery, high availability, hybrid cloud disaster recovery services.

Two kinds of software

DR software built in i2Box can protect both data and business. i2CDP can copy the changed data to disaster recovery server in real time, and record the changes of data in logs. In the case of system failure, i2 software can fast locate the time point to recover back to with the help of the data change log, restore the data to the time before abnormal point by one button, ensure data security and business continuity, and minimize the risk of production data loss, during which RPO is almost zero.

I2Availability can capture production data in real time at the data layer and replicate it to disaster recovery server. At the application layer, it can monitor the running state in real time. If abnormal condition (such as service abnormal stop, network abnormal, hardware malfunction, system downtime) causes business unreachable, it can make the disaster recovery server take over the business service , achieving business continuity.

The deployment of disaster recovery all-in-one machine saves time for Fuzhou University, and its flexible expansion architecture reduces the cost input in the early stage. It can also be expanded at any time according to the increment of data.