Syngenta is one of the world's leading agricultural companies that produces crop protection systems. The company is headquartered in Basel.
It is present in more than 90 countries, including Russia, with branches and representative offices in Moscow, Voronezh, and 30 other cities across the nation. The company employs 28,000 people worldwide.
The company's senior leadership was concerned that the Russian branch could be hit by software sanctions, losing access to the global IT infrastructure built on Microsoft services.
Syngenta was not satisfied with the on-premise solution: the company has no resources of its own in Russia and server availability was uncertain. The best solution was to build the infrastructure in the cloud of a local provider.
ICL Services was tasked with deploying a backup cloud-based platform with email and collaboration tools and migrating the email archive there. This would allow Syngenta's employees to maintain their usual work routine even if access to Microsoft services were lost.
The solution needed to be based on certified domestic products that wouldn't be subject to sanctions and could ensure data security.
Key Challenges
- Build infrastructure in a domestic provider's cloud
- Deploy a backup cloud-based platform with email and collaboration tools and migrate the email archive there
Implemented our solution
To initiate the project, ICL Services first sought a cloud provider suitable for creating legacy applications and offering infrastructure services, such as monitoring, backup, Site-2-Site VPN, and NFS/CIFS file storage support.
ICL Services and Cloud.ru formed a partnership agreement back in March 2023: ICL Services uses cloud services to solve customer tasks, while the cloud provider supplies resources, offers pre-sale support to partners, and provides technical support to end users. This is why the partners began working on the project together.
Using Cloud.ru's Advanced cloud platform, ICL Services specialists deployed two robust Elastic Cloud Server (ECS) virtual machines, each with 16 GB of memory and 8 processors. One machine hosted CommuniGate Pro, a Russian platform for correspondence and collaboration. The other hosted a Microsoft Exchange server with a domain controller. The server converts the mail archive from the proprietary Microsoft format to a format compatible with CommuniGate Pro, and securely sends it to the backup platform via a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
The company also implemented NFS file storage, a public IP address for internet resource access, and a service for accessing the Internet using an external IP address.
In total, 2,195 archives, 14.35 TB in size, had to be migrated and transformed. Data migration to Cloud.ru took two days. In turn, changing the archive's format took several months.
It is not cost-effective to store this amount of backup platform data in Elastic Volume Service block storage. Therefore, we moved the archives to the S3-compliant Object Storage Service (OBS) with cold class storage. Considering the infrequent instances of data access and the large archive size, this solution was 3 times less expensive than the standard storage class.
Upon project completion, Syngenta safeguarded itself against potential loss of access to Microsoft 365: the CommuniGate Pro platform with the email archive will enter production within eight hours, serving as the primary communication and collaboration tool for employees. The project lasted only 4 months.
Products and technologies
- Cloud.ru Advanced
- Elastic Cloud Server (ECS) virtual machines
- CommuniGate Pro
- Microsoft Exchange
Results
- We provided Syngenta with administrative access to the backup platform for customization according to the customer's needs.
- We established an infrastructure that met the customer's requirements.
- ... secured it with Russian-produced antivirus and antispam software,
- ... and implemented two-factor authentication.