Customer Stories / Games / India
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Achieving 1-Hour RPO and 30-Minute RTO Using AWS Backup with Games24x7
Learn how Games24x7 fortified operations and disaster recovery strategy using AWS Backup.
1
hour RPO
30
minute RTO
5
TB of data recovered during testing
4x
growth of backup database without increasing costs
Overview
Disaster recovery (DR) is vital for companies on the cloud, and Games24x7, a tech company with gaming products, is no exception. With ransomware and malware threats prevalent in the gaming industry, the company wanted to improve its DR strategy to adequately protect its player, transactional, and game data. This protection is critical for maintaining a smooth player experience. The company has been on Amazon Web Services (AWS) since 2018 and decided to use AWS Backup, a cost-effective, fully managed, policy-based service that simplifies data protection at scale. Thus, Games24x7 has improved the scalability and security of its backup solution, increased resiliency, optimized costs, and saved time.
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Opportunity | Improving Disaster Recovery Using AWS Backup to Enhance the Player Experience for Games24x7
Games24x7 is an Indian technology leader that offers online games worldwide. It was founded in 2006, in the early days of online gaming, and has a portfolio of both skill games and casual games. The company uses behavioral science and artificial intelligence to provide personalized gaming experiences. Its highly popular games are RummyCircle, which is an online real-money rummy game, and My11Circle, which is a fantasy sports game.
Mitigating the risk of data loss is vital for a gaming company to keep the player experience seamless. Games24x7 has over 120 million players, so it was looking to better protect its key databases. The company had been self-managing its databases and database backups. But these self-managed data backups and data restoration were time consuming. “It could be a nightmare for tech companies if backup storage is missing after primary storage is unavailable, so we started devising a strategy for backups of critical databases,” says Kuldeep Tomar, head of information security at Games24x7.
The company developed two successful proofs of concept for its two highly critical databases. Then, it evaluated and implemented the backup solution for five critical databases in two quarters, focusing on structured databases first before working on NoSQL databases. The work that had begun in earnest under Meghanand Acharekar, tech lead at Games24x7, was taken up by Dilkhush Jha, DevOps engineer at Games24x7, after Acharekar’s untimely demise in December 2023. “We initiated a discussion with the AWS support team to plan for potential issues,” says Jha. “We have validated and tested the data across standard and encrypted databases and can successfully restore data using AWS Backup.”
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The great benefits of using AWS Backup are the configuration simplicity and solution scalability.”
Kuldeep Tomar,
Head of Information Security, Games24x7
Solution | Achieving an RTO of 30 Minutes for a 5 TB Database in Recovery Testing
Games24x7 has been using AWS to handle storage since 2018. The company stores its data using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)—object storage built to retrieve virtually any amount of data from anywhere—and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), an easy-to-use, scalable, high-performance block-storage service.
Games24x7 set up automated backups for this stored data using AWS Backup. Thus, the company saves on manual labor in DR, which improves the solution’s ease of use, saves the company time, and frees up the information security team to perform other vital tasks. “The great benefits of using AWS Backup are the configuration simplicity and solution scalability,” says Tomar.
When the company began testing its new solution, the size of the backup database was a few terabytes (TB). But the size grew by four times as Games24x7 incrementally added more key databases to its backup and as data volumes increased with business growth. “Adopting a multiphase approach, we were backing up more databases over time,” says Tomar. “However, we were able to keep our costs constant.” The company optimized costs by using Amazon EBS snapshots, which are incremental backups that minimize the time required for creating backups and save on storage costs.
Games24x7 also uses AWS to maintain data security. To scan its backups and Amazon EBS snapshots for malware and ransomware threats, Games24x7 uses a solution from Elastio, an AWS Partner. This solution scans all recovery points for dangers that might exist in the backup database. To encrypt its data, Games24x7 uses AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)—built to create, manage, and control cryptographic keys across applications and AWS services. Using these security measures, Games24x7 simplifies data protection and maintains security and compliance for backing up and restoring its databases (according to the AWS Shared Responsibility Model). Games24x7 complies with the ISO 27001 standard for security along with self-regulation that is adopted by the gaming industry.
By successfully building a DR solution on AWS, Games24x7 has improved resiliency. In testing, the company achieved a recovery point objective (RPO) of 1 hour and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 30 minutes for a 5 TB database. “Using AWS Backup, you can plan out your backups intentionally and decide how you move forward with a backup strategy,” says Tomar. “You are able to back up data across accounts and Regions without worrying about needing a complete backup because you can choose a recovery point.”
Outcome | Adopting a Multi-Region Strategy for DR
Using AWS Backup, Games24x7 has improved its DR strategy and expanded its backup capabilities. It is one of the first companies in the Mumbai AWS Region, where it currently hosts its data, to implement AWS for this use case. To further increase resiliency, the company is working on implementing a multi-Region DR strategy using the Hyderabad Region. For Games24x7, applying the DR strategy is an ongoing process, and the company is continuing to add databases to its solution on AWS Backup. Games24x7 is also considering the use of more AWS Backup features, including auditing and reporting.
“This solution on AWS Backup is only one part of our DR strategy,” says Tomar. “We are looking at backing up our entire infrastructure using AWS.”
About Games24x7
Founded in 2006, Games24x7 is an online-gaming company that is headquartered in India. It uses behavioral science, technology, and artificial intelligence to provide an exceptional game-playing experience across its applications.
AWS Services Used
AWS Backup
AWS Backup is a cost-effective, fully managed, policy-based service that simplifies data protection at scale.
Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) is an easy-to-use, scalable, high-performance block-storage service designed for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance.
Learn more »
AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)
AWS Key Management Service (KMS) gives you control over the cryptographic keys used to protect your data. AWS KMS provides you with centralized control over the lifecycle and permissions of your keys.
Learn more »
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