CloudFire selects Storware to secure its OpenStack environment

Who

CloudFire is an Italian cloud provider focused on accelerating IT innovation and automation through its “As a Service Model.” Drawing from over a decade of experience as System Integrators and Telco service providers, CloudFire is based in Reggio Emilia and offers user-centered cloud environments tailored to market dynamics. CloudFire Platform offers robust, scalable, and advanced cloud solutions, allowing users to operate efficiently with intuitive wizards. Embracing open-source principles, we provide a unified marketplace for As-a-Service solutions, ensuring simplicity, control, scalability, and security. CloudFire continues to grow its expertise and staff to stay at the forefront of innovation and meet new challenges with enthusiasm and proficiency.

Business / Technology Challenge

CloudFire, with approximately 40 hosts and 1500 VMs, faced significant challenges in their OpenStack backup and recovery processes:

• Agent dependency – The existing backup solution required the installation of agents on each virtual machine, making it labor-intensive and time-consuming.

• Complexity – The existing backup solution had limited monitoring capabilities and complex job management, leading to operational inefficiencies.

CloudFire used backup solutions that relied on agent installations with either standalone management or centralized server architecture. These solutions did not align with their goal of simplifying and streamlining backup and recovery processes.

Why Storware?

OpenStack environments usually are complex and differ from each other significantly. That’s why securing them requires excellent flexibility from the software architecture, and that’s what Storware Backup and Recovery is designed for. Storware provided CloudFire with a game-changing approach to address their backup and recovery challenges, offering:

• Agentless backup: Storware eliminated the need to install agents on every protected machine, streamlining the backup process and reducing time and effort.

• Centralized management: Storware’s software offered CloudFire a centralized console that provided complete visibility and control over all hypervisors and virtual machines within their OpenStack environment.

• Efficiency enhancement: With Storware, CloudFire experienced improved work efficiency and minimized time loss, enabling them to focus on more critical tasks.

• Enhanced security: Storware’s agentless approach enhanced security by eliminating the need for access to customers’ VMs to provide backup services.

CloudFire highlights

Storware met CloudFire’s business and technological expectations. After PoC and subsequent implementation, the client is highly satisfying due to:

• Ease of use: Storware’s user-friendly interface made it easy for CloudFire’s team to navigate and manage their backup and recovery processes.

• Real-time workflow console: The Task Console provided by Storware allowed CloudFire to monitor and manage backup jobs efficiently.

• Multiple Backup Strategies – Storware Backup & Recovery offers multiple backup strategies that can be easily tailored to the customer’s needs. For example: disk attachment through Cinder with changed block tracking; disk image transfer; volumes or Ceph-based storage; disk attachment through Cinder

• Numerous Backup Destinations: Storware’s solution offered a wide range of supported backup destinations, giving CloudFire flexibility in their data storage options.

• Quick Configuration and Scheduling: Storware’s intuitive backup configuration and scheduling features simplified the setup process.

• Overall Efficiency: CloudFire appreciated the simplicity and efficiency of Storware’s components and architecture.