About Central Coast College
Central Coast College is a for-profit college located in Salinas, California. It is an institution with an enrollment of 200 undergraduate and 120 graduate students.
Challenge
Central Coast College, a forward-thinking institute of higher learning based in California, needed a comprehensive solution for backing up and retaining its data. When they first approached nOps, they were using Rubrik and backing their data up to physical tapes, keeping those tapes on hand for the required retention period and then sending them to another location for long-term storage. Central Coast College realized that they were spending more than necessary, potentially exposing themselves to unacceptable security risks and leaving themselves vulnerable to data loss due to physical tape malfunction.
Solution
nOps met with Central Coast College and, through a discovery process, advised the use of AWS cloud, specifically Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) as the remote location archival solution for their 90TB of data.
A comprehensive solution for backing up and retaining data using nOps best practices and AWS Well-Architected Framework was designed and implemented. In addition to the stated issues, the solution also took into consideration various regulatory, security, privacy, and life-cycle management requirements. The solution made use of nOps Archive Manager software to create backups in Central Coast College’s on-premises local storage to the AWS cloud. Backup data was encrypted in transit over SSL/TLS and sent to the Amazon S3 bucket by the Archive Manager. The S3 bucket encryption was enabled using AWS KMS and was not publicly accessible. Amazon S3 objects were then transitioned to long-term Amazon S3 Standard Infrequent Access (S3 Standard IA) using life cycle policies. S3 Standard-IA provided a customer's key requirement of low cost including all the functionality of S3 but provided rapid object access during disaster scenarios. In total, about 20 Terabytes of data were transferred to Amazon Simple Storage Service.
Benefits – Cost-Effective Solution
Partnering with nOps and AWS enabled Central Coast College to not only improve their overall storage strategy but also helped them improve their security and also provided them with the means to adhere to all state governance regulations and most importantly saving them over 66% over their on-premises,
Speed, Agility, and Improved Data Governance
Central Coast College is experiencing real financial and operational benefits from nOps Archive Manager Software purpose-built on AWS storage solution. The cost savings, approximately 66%, are inclusive of elements such as: no longer being required to purchase
tapes, replacement tapes, no further cost related to human error, the fees associated with external, 3rd party, long-term storage, and others. Additionally, Central Coast College is now fully compliant with all state governance regulations ensuring lifecycle policies are met.
Solution Architecture
