Chartered Accountants is a reputable partnership firm, offering professional audit and assurance services. The firm faced challenges during service unavailability on-premise. Aabasoft Technologies proposed a comprehensive cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) and backup solution using AWS services, ensuring business continuity, data security, and scalability.
About Customer
Chartered Accountants, registered with the ICAI, have a long-standing reputation in the financial sector. Their client base includes regional and multinational clients, and they handle sensitive financial documents such as audit files, tax documents, and GST records. The firm’s commitment to professional excellence is underpinned by its strong ethical foundation.
Customer Challenge
The firm encountered several challenges in their current on-premise IT environment:
- Incidents of data loss caused by hardware failures, resulting in significant downtime
- On-premise issues such as hardware malfunctions, network outages, and power failures adversely impacted business productivity.
- Collaboration between teams, especially during remote work, was hindered by the inability to securely and efficiently share data outside the corporate network.
- Business continuity was severely compromised due to limited disaster recovery options, prolonging downtime during critical incidents.
Solution Implementation Details
Aabasoft’s solution involved migrating Client’s data to AWS and implementing disaster recovery strategies to safeguard their critical information:
RPO & RTO
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO): Set to 1 hour, ensuring that critical systems and data are restored within this time frame in case of a disaster.
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO): Set to 12 hours, ensuring minimal data loss, with backups capturing recent files.
AWS Elastic File System (EFS)
- Migration of on-premise data to AWS EFS, providing secure and scalable storage.
- Real-time backup of critical data with encryption in transit and at rest.
Backup and Restore Workflow
- Regular automated backups of key documents such as audit files, tax documents, and GST records
- In the event of a failure, manual restoration from AWS via FTP ensures continuity with minimal data loss
Architecture Summary
Here is the breakdown of the solution architecture:
AWS EFS
Secure and scalable cloud storage system replacing on-premise infrastructure.
AWS VPC
VPC is configured to secure the cloud servers from unauthorized access.
AWS EC2
EC2 server is setup for sharing the file via FTP
Backup and Restore Plan
Frequent backups with a 12-hour RPO ensure data integrity and recoverability.
FTP
The data is accessed via FTP on failure of On-Premise servers. The FTP server can be accessed from anywhere if the admin gives access.
User
Employees access the system remotely, securely handling corporate data.
Backup Process
FTP transfer to AWS cloud server for consistent and up-to-date backups.
Restore Process
Quick recovery of data during failures, ensuring minimal business disruption
On failure, the data is accessed via FTP directly from the cloud servers.
On restoration, the data saved in the cloud server is replicated to the on-premise servers and the employees access them from the internal network.
High Availability and Disaster Recovery
Cloud-based Infrastructure
Ensures minimal downtime (RTO of 1 hour) and maximum data protection with regular backups (RPO of 12 hours).
Multi-region Deployment
Guarantees high availability and fault tolerance through cloud-based architecture
Results and Benefits
- Data is secured in the cloud using security groups, user authentication, and other robust security measures.
- Cloud-based storage ensures data accessibility from anywhere, enhancing data availability
- Employee collaboration is seamless, even during remote work, due to improved access to shared resources
- Downtime is significantly reduced as data can be quickly restored in the event of on-premise failures.
- Failures in the on-premise environment, such as network, infrastructure, or power issues, can be swiftly resolved by switching to the cloud server via FTP, ensuring smooth business continuity.
Success Measures
- Ensuring critical systems remain operational within the defined RTO, minimizing downtime and disruption.
- Secure and seamless access to corporate data from anywhere, supporting remote work and enhancing overall productivity.
- Significant reduction in the frequency and impact of on-premise failures, with cloud infrastructure providing swift failover solutions to maintain business continuity
- Ability to restore data and systems within the designated 1-hour timeframe, mitigating the effects of hardware, network, or power failures
- Enhanced collaboration capabilities, allowing teams to securely share and access data in real-time, regardless of location
