VIEWPOINT: Setting new standards in cloud data resilience
In this article, Alex explores how single-touch infrastructure provisioning, combined with a multi-region and multi-cloud backup strategy, can ensure availability in a worst-case scenario.
The evolution of enterprise software infrastructure
The modern enterprise relies on an ever-increasing number of software products to operate, from back-office people management to the front-office systems that power customer-facing applications. Historically, such applications were purchased and installed on dedicated data centre hardware, with teams assembled and trained to upgrade and maintain this infrastructure - and of course the software running on it. Typically, this required a growing multitude of people, accumulating runbooks describing the individual operations of these services, and the servers on which they run.
The emergence of hyperscale cloud platforms has allowed enterprises to focus on the customer experience, by placing infrastructure and software responsibilities with those best able to support them.
The emergence of hyperscale cloud platforms, such as AWS and SaaS products like Alfa Systems, has streamlined these operations in terms of both people and infrastructure. Their widespread adoption has allowed enterprises to focus on delivering services that elevate the experiences of their customers and users, by placing the responsibilities for infrastructure and software squarely with the companies best able to support them.
Trusted partners for critical operations
Putting the security and availability of critical data into the hands of another organisation obliges such an enterprise to apply great rigour in the selection of its partners, rewarding those with a proven track record, industry-standard compliance accreditations, and a focus on security above all else.
Through years of demonstrated excellence in managing mission-critical infrastructure for equipment and automotive finance, Alfa has built a reputation as such a partner.
Infrastructure recovery through automation
Alfa has previously explored our approach to managing each customer’s isolated infrastructure from a central control plane, using full end-to-end automation.
By leveraging AWS’s region-agnostic services, we can recreate a customer’s infrastructure in any supported region, in a clean account, in a single step. This gives us a very powerful recovery capability to combat a dynamic and fast-moving threat landscape and, while we do offer enhanced DR capabilities using always-on, multi-region infrastructure, we can always fall back to a complete rebuild if needed.
Alfa can recreate a customer’s infrastructure in any supported region, in a clean account, in a single step.
Data resilience and backup strategy
Of course, a complete infrastructure rebuild is only useful when you have a recent copy of the data in the region and account to which you’re evacuating. This is where data resilience comes into play. By storing nightly backups in isolated vaults in multiple AWS regions and on multiple cloud platforms, we are preparing for accidental data loss, corruption, or even a planned attack on the primary infrastructure.
Finally, advanced tooling and resilient backups will only lead to a positive outcome if the processes that rely on them are frequently rehearsed and stress-tested by the team using them. By using the same features and approaches to move data between environments during normal operation, and performing regular DR tests, we can be sure that our teams are fully prepared for any scenario.
Advanced tooling and resilient backups only lead to a positive outcome if the processes that rely on them are frequently rehearsed and stress-tested.
Resilience to the unknown
In Alfa’s view, being ‘resilient to the unknown’ requires comprehensive backup coverage, stored in the optimum number of isolated locations, with frequently tested platforms and processes. Alfa’s Data Guardian technology is the result of our commitment to providing the best possible readiness across a wide range of known and unknown scenarios which might threaten the availability of our customers’ infrastructure.
Alfa is unique in the industry in being able to say that the features described above are all included with the Alfa Cloud platform as standard.
Being ‘resilient to the unknown’ requires comprehensive backup coverage, stored in the optimum number of isolated locations, with frequently tested platforms and processes.
Alfa Cloud provides the full power of Alfa Systems as a service, without the overheads of provisioning, patching, recovery or monitoring.
Data Guardian, Alfa's best-in-class approach to single-tenant SaaS resilience, combines dedicated isolated networking with multi-region and multi-cloud data backups to set new standards for data resilience and compliance.
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