Metalloinvest, a leading manufacturer and supplier of iron ore products and hot briquetted iron in the world market, one of the regional producers of high-quality steel, together with JSA Group (part of the ICS Holding diversified IT group) implemented a project , aimed at providing additional resiliency of their digital resources.
At present, the unified information core of the Company, which serves as the basis for automated analytical systems, production process control systems and innovative activities, is deployed on the basis of a data processing center (DPC) at the Oskol Electrometallurgical Plant (part of the company Metalloinvest). Despite the stable operation and the proven reliability of the main data center, it was decided to provide the possibility of redundancy to a geographically remote site. At the same time, we are talking not only about protecting information from external encroachments, but also about the stable operation of IT resources responsible for business processes.
The loss of connectivity in the data center and, as a result, the impossibility of recovering data from backup equipment is unlikely, but such a scenario cannot be completely ruled out, - explains Konstantin Zelenkov, CTO of JSA Group. - Microsoft Azure was chosen as the platform for cloud backup. It is used to create backup copies of data critical to Metalloinvest's operations. The creation of the site has become an additional factor in ensuring the reliability and resiliency of the key resource of the company's digital transformation. "
Currently, JSA Group is completing work on the construction of a second local data center for geo-redundancy tasks, after which the risks of platform failure will be assessed and a decision will be made on the further development of the cloud backup site.
“Over the past two years, Metalloinvest has been implementing an extensive digital transformation program, in which the IT platform plays a key role. Ensuring a guarantee of its uninterrupted operation is one of the key tasks for the Company, - says Yulia Shutkina, Director for Digital Transformation of Management Company Metalloinvest. “It took about four months to deploy the backup site in the Microsoft Azure cloud. Copying and backing up data to the cloud is completely transparent. The test switches carried out have shown that there are no failures and that all Metalloinvest systems are stable. "
“Using a backup site in Azure - not only provides resiliency, but also significant savings by using minimal configurations in the cloud sufficient to handle inbound HANA replication. And although the scenario of failure of the main data center is unlikely, if it is necessary to switch to a backup data center in Azure, we will be able to quickly expand cloud resources to ensure the stable operation of all business processes, - says Alexander Lipkin, director of the department for technological development and support of the Microsoft office in Russia.
