Backup home equipment the sizzling topic for Pas-de-Calais fireside brigade

With requirements for strict, long-duration backup and archiving, French fireside brigade web page online out to adjust optical media with a StorageCraft appliance and misfortune-proof storage

Pierre Berlemont
Antony Adshead,
Storage Editor

Revealed: 26 Mar 2021

Every day the Pas-de-Calais (PdC) fireside brigade receives requests for call recordings from the police and courts. Such emergency calls are all recorded and will also very properly be retained for 15 years.

Nonetheless the optical media old to retailer them had severely change increasingly more exhausting to exercise. Not least amongst the boundaries changed into as soon as that it changed into as soon as extremely time-consuming to obtain and collect greater data from 10 years ago or more on a assortment of CDs. So, the time had arrive to transfer to a more scalable and accessible methodology of backup and archiving.

The brigade has about 5,000 workers and volunteers. There are 1,400 loyal firefighters and up to three,500 volunteers, with 300 administrative and technical crew.

Its HQ is at Arras, with three datacentres that toddle 140 VMware virtual servers on 16 Cisco UCS blades. Rather than Microsoft Place of labor 365, nothing runs in the cloud. The force uses electronic vaulting products and services to meet its correct duties concerning digitised invoices and other correct documents.

Victim files held for 10 years

It changed into as soon as a cramped over a year ago that the PdC fireside brigade decided to gather two StorageCraft OneXafe data protection backup home equipment with 12 disks of 10TB. Skill totals 120TB raw capacity build in in two server rooms.

The OneXafe sequence is constructed on scale-out NAS storage with the firm’s ShadowXafe backup machine on board.

OneXafe containers offer scale-out file entry storage onto an underlying object retailer, with a single parallel file machine at some stage in all cases.

The StorageCraft product is the most stylish in an emerging class of backup home equipment that merge backup machine with storage hardware, nevertheless with scale-out ability.

Not like standalone backup home equipment, backup appliance nodes will also furthermore be constructed out into grid-bask in clusters of backup/secondary storage capacity.

Key avid gamers are Rubrik and Cohesity, with established backup machine makers CommVault and Veritas furthermore getting onto the bandwagon.

A key draw of the acquisition for the PdC fireside brigade, besides getting appropriate tag, changed into as soon as that it would be scalable in the face of rising data protection requirements.

“With the coming of the pandemic, we began doing a large selection of video-conferencing calls, which we needed to myth,” acknowledged Frederic Van Camp, CIO at the brigade. “That will perchance well include meetings spherical tender processes, the outcomes of which will be contested and so proof is required.”

The brigade furthermore wanted to digitise medical experiences, which ought to silent be saved for 10 years. There might perchance be furthermore drone footage. So, some of the advantages of the StorageCraft home equipment is the flexibility to settle for any power, regardless of its capacity or velocity.

Van Camp highlighted other components that motivated the brigade’s shopping for selections. First changed into as soon as the indisputable fact that OneXafe runs on a Dell chassis, which intended his team will also prefer pleasure in Dell hardware enhance, which changed into as soon as reassuring. So, shall we embrace, if the brigade runs into a misfortune, it’ll call StorageCraft’s 24×7 enhance and whether it is a ways a hardware deliver, a Dell technician is sent out within four hours.

Object storage

Files saved is properly protected in opposition to malware. “We work in object storage mode, with snapshots taken each 90 seconds,” acknowledged Florian Malecki, marketing director at StorageCraft. “Ransomware can’t erase data, encrypt it or block entry. With each substitute, fresh objects are created.”

Audio calls, video and experiences are all bask in minded to object storage attributable to they don’t appear to be subject to later modification. Nonetheless security features don’t live there. Snapshots are protected on Files Enviornment hardware, with backups furthermore copied to tape and moved to a bodily fireside-proof right at another place of living.

With two StorageCraft home equipment deployed, the PdC fireside brigade plans to prefer another for its place of living at Hénin-Beaumont ,shut to Lens. “If there’s a misfortune at Arras, the details is replicated to Hénin-Beaumont,” acknowledged Van Camp. “The Arras place of living is shut to an airport, with a Seveso-classified factory furthermore shut. With these nearby, we bear now to assume the unthinkable concerning the safety of our data.”

The brigade is furthermore thinking of systems to address security in another case in future, with tips mooted to totally section its networks so as that attack surfaces are decreased.

“I envisage segmenting by carrier the exercise of virtualisation,” acknowledged Van Camp. “As a replace of updating workstations, we’d true update the servers. That methodology, I will also furthermore be definite the 1,200 workstations bear the most stylish updates. That’s a assignment that is on the entire refined attributable to an update can slip contaminated or there are PCs that true haven’t been changed into on in a actually long time.”