Case Study: Disaster Recovery
RISE Network Streamlined their Operations with a Flexible Disaster Recovery Solution
About RISE Network
The Connecticut RISE Network (RISE) is a leading education technology company that provides online learning solutions, career guidance, and best practices for K-12 educational institutions. RISE works to ensure all RISE high school students graduate with a plan and the skills and confidence to achieve college and career success. RISE partners with public high schools to lead networks where school communities work together to use data to learn and improve.
When they needed to implement a solution that ensured the availability, access and performance of its collaborative network for its students, teachers, administrators, and the communities it serves, they called AximCloud. Ransomware protection is just one requirement, any disruption or performance degradation would result in student and teacher dissatisfaction and reputational damage.
AximCloud, as a long time strategic partner provided advice and guidance on how best to proceed. A Preliminary analysis suggested that the implementation of a Disaster Recovery Environment (DRE) and the execution of a well-formed Business Continuity Plan (BCP) would offer a more rapid, accurate, and measurably more stable failover to an alternate environment should an unforeseen event make the production infrastructure unavailable.
AximCloud is a strategic partner for our non-profit. They manage our operations so we don't have to. And they were also instrumental in delivering the processes, procedures and technology required for us to comply with regulations and sleep at night, knowing our data was secure and always going to be available.
Fred Benton, Deputy Director of Research RISE
The AximCloud Solution
Comprehensive Analysis
AximCloud conducted a comprehensive assessment of RISE's current IT infrastructure, applications, and data, then identified the recovery requirements and objectives (RPO/ RTO). A customized and cost-effective Pilot Light disaster recovery solution that satisfied budget requirements and business objectives was delivered that adhered to the AWS Well-Architected Framework. All applicable AWS services were used to build and maintain a minimal version of the customer's IT infrastructure in a secondary AWS region, where data is replicated and synced. AximCloud then produced the runbooks, and tooling to automate and orchestrate the failover and recovery process.
24/7 Monitoring
AximCloud provides 24/7 monitoring and management of the disaster recovery solution, with the same operational excellence discipline used to service and support their main production workloads. Ongoing support and guidance on potential improvements and optimizations is part of AximCloud standard service. As are status reports, and health and performance alerting.
Protection Against Disruption
By partnering with AximCloud, RISE's business is now protected against disruption, including ransomware.
We helped to document and validate their contingency plan and demonstrate HIPAA and FERPA compliance to their regulators, stakeholders and auditors. Application availability, data security, and data integrity are now part of RISE standard service agreements allowing them to focus on their students, teachers and administrators.
Ongoing Benefits
Health Check status 100% visibility
The disaster recovery environment is now monitored and proactively managed and optimized by AximCloud, as is the rest of their IT operation 24/7, including DRE test results.
Regulatory Compliance + Security Posture
AximCloud ensured RISE that the DRE complied with the HIPAA and FERPA regulations, and that it had the necessary safeguards and controls to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their student health and education records.
Enhanced Disaster Recovery Support
Automated, flexible disaster recovery (DR) solutions can help you optimize testing, reduce costs, and meet unique business requirements effectively.
Optimize Your Disaster Recovery Plan with AximCloud
AximCloud is invested in, and committed to, the success of everyone of our customers. Every engagement is personal. Our service level guarantees are provided for all customers, and our recovery time and recovery point objectves are tailored specifically to you.
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AximCloud on (AWS) helps you minimize the impact of testing and recovery through automation, and streamlining. We proactively manage and audit DR deployments via rapid and continuous test cycles. Implementation of a Business Continuance Plan (BCP), and/or a Disaster Recovery Environment (DRE) entails a set of procedures and policies enabling business and data processing workflows to recover and continue to function following a disaster (either natural or man-made). These events may include (but not be limited to) hardware or software failures, network communication failures, power outages, damage to a physical infrastructure (read: buildings) e.g. fire / flooding, human error or natural disasters.