Idea Bank centralised Microsoft 365, PC, and VM backups and significantly speed up recovery and configuration with Synology.

As a regulated market operator, Idea Bank is legally bound to keep backups of all operations, including emails and Microsoft SharePoint data. The bank performed backups of its Microsoft 365 data and user information manually. However, that solution proved to be overly time-consuming.

Employee workstation failures were another concern. Banks are subject to a number of security requirements, which apply to applications and other endpoint data. However, while programs and data on endpoints were protected, they were often difficult to recover.

Hardware failures such as hard drive corruption resulted in data loss as well as downtime from the repair process. The bank therefore sought a backup solution with better restoration options to minimize the risk of data loss and maximize service availability.

Fast and reliable SaaS backups

For their cloud application backup, Idea Bank deployed two 12-bay Synology RackStation units to realize more than 160 TB of RAID 6 storage. On one RS3617xs+, they used Synology's license-free solution Active Backup for Microsoft 365 to protect 1,252 Microsoft 365 user accounts and 512 Microsoft SharePoint sites. With the second unit, they protected 1,254 users and 727 sites.

Personal and shared data from Microsoft accounts and mailboxes are backed up and archived along with their respective folders, structures, and attachments. The bank also uses the Account Discovery option to detect new users and automatically add them to backup tasks, reducing the need for manual configuration.

Automatic endpoint protection

To back up physical and virtual Windows deployments, the bank leverages Synology Active Backup for Business on two 12-bay rackmount SAS units that are expandable to 180 bays each. The two RS18017xs+ systems perform event-triggered backups of 31 physical devices and scheduled backups of 175 virtual machines.

Bare-metal backup with Active Backup for Business proved to be exactly the time-saving solution that Idea Bank was looking for. Applications can be restored to their original configurations and computers are ready to use as soon as they are restored. Employees no longer need to reconfigure applications or search for individual files after recovery.

Easy secondary backup configuration

To add a layer of redundancy to their backup regime, Idea Bank uses Snapshot Replication to regularly back up each RS18017xs+ unit to the other. This way, even when the primary backup destination is unavailable, backups can always be accessed and restored from the other device.

Easy remote management and auditing

Idea Bank found it easy to centrally monitor, audit, and manage the status, storage use, and bandwidth use of their backup solutions using Synology's intuitive DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system and Active Backup Suite, thanks to the platform's high level of integration and convenient remote management options.

The DSM operating system on Synology NAS makes it easy to implement powerful backup solutions:

Active Backup for Microsoft 365 protects personal and shared data from Microsoft accounts and mailboxes. New user accounts are protected automatically.

Active Backup for Business automatically backs up physical endpoints and VMs. Bare-metal restoration of Windows devices simplifies and speeds up restoration of servers and PCs.

Snapshot Replication provides extra redundancy by creating and storing near-instant secondary copies of backed up data to other Synology systems.

DSM and Active Backup Suite simplify and centralize monitoring, auditing, and management of backup solutions, and allow for easy scaling when more storage is needed.