FEINAR

FEINAR Defines New Disaster Recovery Strategies
FEINAR has entrusted VEM sistemi with ensuring the continuity of the company’s essential services, following a path that aligns with the company’s needs and goals.

VEM sistemi was chosen by FEINAR—a company that has operated for 50 years in the business services market—to define new Disaster Recovery strategies with the aim of ensuring business continuity.

As cyberattacks, emergencies, and natural disasters capable of disrupting business operations become increasingly common, FEINAR’s IT team had long recognized the need to revisit processes to ensure continuity of all essential functions, data protection, and backup.

This need stems on one hand from the desire to guarantee uninterrupted services to FEINAR’s more than 3,000 clients, and on the other hand to safeguard its wealth of sensitive information. This year, FEINAR marks its 50th year in the market and stands out as a service company specializing in personnel management as well as tax and administrative areas. With headquarters in Belluno, eight branch offices, and over 180 employees, the company is known for its cutting-edge technological choices and strong focus on cybersecurity.

In FEINAR’s operational context, a service interruption can severely impact all services and damage the company’s reputation, with consequent business losses. Hence the company’s need to define a new strategy for IT service outages, entrusting VEM sistemi—a partner of over twenty years—for consulting support.

A Two-Year Project
The project was developed over the past two years, taking into account two key needs:

Off-site Data Backup: Decoupling data confidentiality, integrity, and availability from the headquarters, where the data center is located.

Dedicated Disaster Recovery Site: Implementing a DR site in another data center equipped with network, cybersecurity, computing, and storage capabilities to ensure continuity for both FEINAR users and end customers in the event of a fault at the main data center, with maximum data security—even in the case of a ransomware attack.

“The starting point was to find a certified external data center that could provide computing and storage capacity, essentially a hosting environment where FEINAR could transfer information if necessary,” says Claudio Garna, CIO of FEINAR. “We evaluated the technological solutions and budget, presented the project to the Board, and upon approval, entrusted VEM with managing the infrastructure to implement the project.”

VEM’s specialists proposed replacing the outdated computing systems at the Belluno headquarters—limited in performance due to growing services and clientele.

New Cisco UCS blade systems, high-performing and scalable to meet current and future demands, were acquired for the headquarters, supported by Schneider Electric power and cooling systems. The older servers, still functional and under maintenance, were repurposed for the Disaster Recovery data center.

As for storage, FEINAR already had two NetApp All Flash units—one primary and one secondary—located on the Belluno campus and synchronized via SnapMirror technology. VEM proposed relocating the secondary unit to the DR site, managing its configuration while maintaining the previous update and data recovery syncs, thus completing the DR data center setup.

Cloud Backup with Rubrik
“To enhance the Belluno site and repurpose existing equipment for DR, while relocating the second storage unit from Belluno to the DR center, allowed us to benefit from major economies of scale, which were very well received by the Board,” Garna explains.

To complete the project, VEM needed to implement a system ensuring seamless data flow both at the headquarters and off-site. The solution was Rubrik, enabling FEINAR to back up data directly to a cloud platform. The client highly appreciated this solution for its reliability and the ease with which backups and restores could be managed—far superior to legacy systems.

With Rubrik, FEINAR’s production system is saved locally on Rubrik appliances, then synchronized to the cloud. With both NetApp and Rubrik in place, FEINAR’s data is constantly and rapidly replicated to both the DR site and a cloud-based backup environment.

Advanced anti-ransomware features have also been introduced, making the system highly robust and resilient to such attacks.

Supporting Technologies and Centralized Management
Two critical preparatory steps supported the DR site creation:

Network Upgrade: Two years ago, with VEM’s help, FEINAR transitioned its WAN communication system from proprietary to Cisco Meraki’s open SD-WAN technology. This allowed for the creation of an intelligent network where applications dynamically utilize the most efficient available connection and even back up physical lines with mobile connectivity.

Threat Intelligence: FEINAR has long protected its entire infrastructure and client data with Certego’s Threat Intelligence service.

All technology at FEINAR’s sites is monitored and supported by VEM’s services, covering network, security, data center, fire protection, access control, and video surveillance.

“One of the positive aspects I’d like to highlight is that we have a single point of contact—VEM sistemi—who developed a custom project tailored to our needs. This began years ago and covered everything: from renewing the server farm to implementing a reliable backup system, ensuring easily restorable and usable copies—even after ransomware attacks—and finally establishing a Disaster Recovery site. We’ve achieved all our goals with great satisfaction,” concludes Claudio Garna.

Thanks to this journey with VEM sistemi, FEINAR now boasts a top-tier technological infrastructure that enables the company and its clients to operate securely and efficiently at every level.