Softline has developed and implemented an Active Directory disaster recovery methodology for Agroinvest Group

2022: Implementation of Active Directory Disaster Recovery Methodology

On May 17, 2022, Softline announced that it had developed a disaster recovery plan for the Agroinvest Group for the Active Directory (AD) infrastructure hosted in the Softline Cloud. Softline engineers also conducted practical classes for employees of the client's IT service to restore the infrastructure. Thus, thanks to a proactive approach to IT maintenance, an up-to-date methodology for managing business continuity risks was developed for the agricultural company. The works were carried out as part of a comprehensive service - Premier Services Softline.

Source: st.volga.news

Agroinvest Group specializes in the cultivation of grain and oilseeds, as well as outdoor vegetables, gardening and animal husbandry. The company's divisions are located in 7 regions of Russia (Volgograd, Voronezh, Kursk, Lipetsk, Tambov, Ryazan, Samara), and the number of employees is more than 4000.

The development of a competitive company was impossible without the use of competent business and IT strategies. Therefore, in order to optimize costs, part of the enterprise infrastructure associated with Active Directory (directory services Microsoft) was moved to the cloud. In order to ensure the continuity of this critical IT service, Agroinvest Group contacted its IT partner Softline. Specialists of the provider of IT solutions and services offered to solve the client's problem using Premier Services. Softline engineers have been providing this comprehensive service for customers for three years in order to reduce business risks associated with the use of information technology. As of mid-May 2022, Softline is the only company in Russia that provides proactive support services IT infrastructures based on Microsoft products using specialized Softline Assessment software.

"In order for a critical infrastructure to remain available in the event of an unexpected incident - and Active Directory is this - you must have a proactive disaster recovery strategy. At the start of work, we used the Softline Assessment solution to collect and analyze data on the state of the client's infrastructure. This software includes a module for machine data analysis, which allows you to get analytics about the state of the infrastructure in a short time and without the influence of the human factor. Based on this data, we prepared an expert opinion from which the client was able to see which components of his infrastructure could negatively affect the health of Active Directory. Immediately before the start of any work within the Premier Services, we necessarily collect data using a specialized tool in order to collect the necessary information for further analysis and reduce the time for work. In just a week, using this approach, we developed and tested a disaster recovery plan for Agroinvest Group that includes corrective and preventive security measures. In addition, as part of the work, we conducted practical classes for the client on infrastructure recovery, during which a customer infrastructure model was created and various failure scenarios were simulated. As a result, the company's specialists were able to master the developed plan in practice, having gone through every step to restore the system, " explained Andrey Moiseev, Head of Service Business Development at Softline

"Understanding how stable a company depends on the smooth operation of IT services, we began to consider the disaster recovery plan as an important tool in business risk management. Engineers of Premier Services Softline have developed for us a detailed set of measures and rules aimed at preserving the functioning of the AD infrastructure and providing for its restoration in the necessary time. At the same time, several incident scenarios were worked out, and for each of them the provider's experts wrote detailed step-by-step instructions. It is also valuable that the plan is drawn up in detail and available, so any IT specialist of the company will be able to perform the recovery procedure in accordance with this instructions, even in the absence of a service owner. Thus, in our company, the process of managing the continuity of the provision of IT services is brought to a qualitatively different level. It is also important to note that the audit conducted by specialists, which identified bottlenecks in the infrastructure, allowed us to optimize IT management, as well as improve system security and performance. " commented Denis Voropaev, Head of Infrastructure Development and Operation Department of Agroinvest Group