AB CarVal Enhances Cost Efficiency and Backup Security with Druva and AWS

AB CarVal is an alternative investment fund management company that invests in corporate securities, structured credit, loan portfolios, and hard assets. It utilized AWS Fargate to build applications and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) to operate and scale its databases in the cloud. However, AB CarVal wanted to identify a more cost-effective approach for data storage and backups. Its legacy backup process involved frequent manual audits, which was an inefficient use of resources.

Solutions from AWS Partner Druva and AWS provided the robust backup support AB CarVal needed, and helped automate many of its manual tasks. Druva’s data protection platform for AWS provided security and management for AB CarVal’s Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) data. The secure, scalable product fulfilled backup, recovery, and retention needs. AB CarVal implemented immutable air gaps to avoid data loss, and Druva provided a single dashboard to manage its complete AWS footprint. “Druva delivered scalability, simplicity, and time and cost savings. We don't have to worry about infrastructure management or maintenance with their solution—it makes life much easier,” said Scott Holm, VP of Technical Operations at AB CarVal.

The Druva Data Resiliency Cloud helped automate day-to-day data management tasks and provided scalability to keep pace with AB CarVal’s growing workload data—all within its own AWS account. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform backs up AB CarVal’s Amazon EC2 instances in multi-region Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) stores. Storing data in multiple global AWS Regions and Availability Zones provided durability and high availability, and Druva’s volume tagging feature optimized storage performance and further reduced the need for manual tasks. Rather than having to tag individual Amazon EBS volumes, AB CarVal was able to tag an Amazon EC2 or Amazon RDS instance for backup, and Druva’s capabilities handled all the necessary storage and backup functionality for the EBS volumes they contained.

Druva’s support for hybrid workloads added backup, recovery, and archiving for data on AB CarVal’s virtual machines, and included deduplication and security with encryption. Druva’s on-demand disaster recovery feature provided automated runbook execution to simplify managing multiple processes. The Druva solution allows AB CarVal to apply common policies and monitor its data at a global level, and offers customization for specific backup requirements and retention policies. These capabilities helped AB CarVal be more precise about backup needs to avoid sprawl and lowered its total cost of ownership (TCO) as a result.

As a financial firm, AB CarVal must adhere to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules and various other compliance requirements. Because Druva’s SaaS solution features built-in automatic updates to meet new and changing compliance standards, it removed the need for manual maintenance, patching, and constant checks to ensure regulatory standards were being met. AB CarVal set up profiles and deployed Druva’s robust set of automation features. This facilitated a more hands-off approach for AB CarVal that provided peace of mind and freed up resources. “Switching to Druva has made us much more comfortable with our backups,” said Holm.

AB CarVal also leveraged Druva for end user data protection including additional compliance monitoring and data governance, which further simplified meeting security and regulatory compliance requirements. This also provided AB CarVal users with the autonomy to perform automatic restores for local documents on their laptops and mobile workstations. With access to their own data and the ability to self-serve, IT teams reduced overhead, and locating and restoring data became more efficient.

AB CarVal is working toward modernizing its IT environment to fully embrace a serverless infrastructure and the containerization of its applications. It plans to split up its multi account architecture to add more granularity to its accounts and get better insight into opportunities for optimization and cost savings. On the Druva side, Holm noted, “We're continuing to leverage Druva’s comprehensive solution, and I don't see that changing. It’s a major cost benefit for AB CarVal, recognized up to our executive leadership team.”