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Testimonials
Municipality of Leeuwarden
Success Story | Regional Archives / Municipality of Leeuwarden | Silent Bricks
“Still a niche in the Netherlands, but I think this is a solution that fits very well in an archive.”
Jeen Oppedijk, Senior ICT Specialist, Municipality of Leeuwarden
Challenges
For the Historical Center Leeuwarden, the municipality of Leeuwarden was looking for a sustainable solution for archiving digital data. The challenge was to find a storage solution that permanently stores the data delivered and acquired in different ways. This without being tied to a supplier or a particular storage format. The goal here is to preserve the ultimately stored data unalterably for eternity; security and a data migration without loss of data are therefore a must.
In addition, the municipality of Leeuwarden is creating a digital “semi-archive,” with data that must be kept for the duration of the legal retention obligation, but not forever. Convenient if this data can be archived on the same storage solution as the HCL’s historical data. With the Silent Bricks, the municipality of Leeuwarden has found just this solution.
Looking for sustainable storage
The point is that all this now digital data is stored in different ways and systems. On USB discs and CDs, for example. “Not very sustainable,” Jeen judges. Not for nothing is the archival industry referred to as “the Middle Ages of archiving,” to indicate that good archiving is only in its infancy. “A lot is currently moving from paper to digital, but not much thought is being given to long-term storage. Or eternity. It’s right that archivists are concerned about that.” The HCL was looking for a sustainable way to store data, without being directly tied to a vendor and format that you can’t get on with at some point. In addition, the storage itself had to meet certain requirements.
Requirements
- Loose USB discs are no longer a digital archive repository
- A backup is not an archive
- Archival records should be preserved for eternity
- Storage must be energy efficient
- Integrity must be ensured and monitored
- All data must be stored redundantly
- Data is easily available
- Migration must be possible without loss of data
- Keeping data storage in-house
- Storage of data must be scalable
- Storage must be compliant with open formats and standards
- Once written data should not be able to be changed hardware-wise
Solution
2 Silent Brick systems each with 1x Controller G5000 1x Extension Shelf 1x Silent Brick 8/12 TB 4x Silent Brick 16/24 TB 1x Silent Brick WORM 8/12 TB
1x Silent Brick WORM 16/24 TB
“This system is energy efficient, all the data is subject to an audit every week, everything is three times redundant. And the hardware WORM. That was decisive.”
Jeen Oppedijk, Senior ICT Specialist,Municipality of Leeuwarden
Municipality of Gennep
Success Story | Data backup | Silent Bricks
“It’s nice that it’s very scalable. So if you get more data, you just put in another Silent Brick!”
Roel Janssen – Technical Information Advisor, Municipality of Gennep
Challenges
The increase in cyber attacks also affects municipalities and other governments. Hackers are attempting to gain access to IT infrastructure to place ransomware on municipal IT systems to extort ransom money. The Municipality of Gennep was therefore looking for solid security against cyberattacks to prevent or at least minimize damage. The solution had to follow the advice of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities and ideally be integrated into the existing-the Veeam backup infrastructure.
View options
So: looking for a storage system with an air-gap, a physical separation between network and storage so that the backup cannot be accessed by hackers through the system. Several possibilities passed in review. “We looked at storage on tape, but that turned out to be too laborious and too slow, aside from some technical obstacles. Eventually we ended up with Silent Bricks. Everyone at Gennep Municipality can see that the moment you remove a Silent Brick from the system, you literally create an air-gap. Silent Bricks additionally require few actions, they are simple to use. It’s not higher math.” Also important was the link with Veeam. Gerrie Gossens: “The basis we work with is Veeam Backup, which makes a backup in the evening at the work location. Then a copy is written to the fallback location. After those two jobs comes a third job to feed a replication system with this data based on the backups. So now we’ve extended that with an air-gapped backup system, interfaced with Veeam.”
Different solutions
Following the advice of the VNG, the Gennep municipality turned to Avensus, the regular IT partner for the municipality, for advice. Daan Lieshout commented, “There are several solutions to this problem. You can write your data away externally to a cloud service or a secure Linux server, but all these solutions are still connected by a thread. Although writing away to a so-called hardened Linux server is almost impossible to hack, the municipality of Gennep was right not to settle for “almost. They want to make sure their data is secure.”
Solution
- 1 Silent Brick system with
- 1x Drive G2000 pro
- 5x Silent Brick 16/24 TB
“Suppose you’ve put a lot of money and energy into stopping hackers, things can still go wrong. Often it’s because of human error. Still, we wanted a secure backup that would be inaccessible to hackers, so that in the event of a hack or other calamity, we wouldn’t be completely helpless.”
Roel Janssen (Technical Information Advisor) & Gerrie Gossens (System Administrator)
Hospital Kempten-Oberallgäu
Use Case | Healthcare | Silent Bricks
“FAST LTA was very cooperative, decisive quick and flexible.”
Joachim Schmitt, Head of ICT, Hospital Group Kempten-Oberallgäu
By Revision secure archiving and AGFA HYDMedia called for a new approach
However, since revision-proof archiving became increasingly important due to changed regulations and the performance of the tape drives was no longer sufficient for the growing data volumes, Joachim Schmitt and Benjamin Reil decided to go in new directions for archiving and backup. In addition, the board decided to purchase a modern content management system. With AGFA HYDMedia, all patient data must be managed digitally. Until now, the hospital association was already using AGFA ORBIS, a solution for controlling complex hospital processes. With the addition by the content management system, digitization is taken a big step forward. “With the merging of ORBIS databases, we were faced with the task of making the existing archiving systems centrally available in the shortest possible time.” says Head of ICT Joachim Schmitt.
Challenges
The introduction of HYDMedia, a comprehensive Enterprise Content Management System for hospitals from AGFA Healthcare, required a restructuring of data storage. The old tape library, whose capacity and speed were no longer adequate, had to be replaced. In addition, a revision-proof filing system had to preserve the electronic patient records. At the same time, the introduction of Veeam as a new backup solution was planned where the backup data must also be written to the new secondary storage
Solution
Soon they came to FAST LTA’s solutions, because when searching for an optimal system, the Munich-based company was named by AGFA as a certified provider for data backup and archiving. References from hospitals such as the Waldburg-Zeil Clinics and the Oberschwaben Clinic led to a clear choice of FAST LTA. The fact that their solutions are also used in more than half of all hospitals in Germany was an additional reason for this decision. For the backup solution, they chose Veeam’s software, which also works perfectly with the Silent Brick system and is certified.
- 2 Silent Bricks systems with each
- 1x Controller G5000
- 1x Extension Shelf
- 1x Silent Brick Flash 3TB (gross)
- 3x Silent Brick 24TB (gross)
- 2x Silent Brick WORM 24TB (gross)
“In 15 years […] I have very rarely seen a technology firm that […] engages so flexibly, quickly and with such high quality. Chapeau!”
Joachim Schmitt, head of ICT
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