Lembaga Lebuhraya Malaysia (LLM), the government agency that oversees the design, construction, operation, maintenance and toll collection for highways and expressways spanning 1,820km countrywide, has chosen Veeam Availability Suite and Aegis to modernise their data protection.
The Veeam and Aegis solutions will help LLM meet recovery objectives in the business continuity standards required by the Malaysian government, and also extend backups to a secure private cloud to increase ransomware protection.
The solutions also support compliance with the ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS) standard and will help LLM reduce annual IT costs by 50%.
“Our goal is to improve the country’s highways,” said Mohd Sukri bin Shuib, Assistant Director of Technology at LLM. “Veeam and Aegis protect the IT applications that support highway management and maintenance, so travel can be safer, faster and easier.”
As millions of people travel on Malaysia’s highways, LLM assesses every kilometre to improve safety, reduce traffic congestion and integrate automation. Several IT applications are used in this process, including an expressway performance indicator system, a highway construction monitoring process and a toll-road evaluation system.
Previous system was outdated
LLM plays an important role in the lives of many Malaysians. The company constructs, manages and maintains highways and expressways that connect families and friends to each other and to employment opportunities, educational institutions, healthcare services, retail stores and more. By building, monitoring and renovating roadways, LLM is able to contribute to the country’s wellbeing.
Although millions of people travel on Malaysia’s highways, many are not aware that LLM assesses every kilometre to improve safety, reduce traffic congestion and integrate automation. Several IT applications assist in this process, including an expressway performance indicator system, a highway construction monitoring process and a toll-road evaluation system.
While travellers may not be familiar with these applications, many of them are familiar with LLM’s website because it provides helpful maps, construction updates, traffic status and toll-rate information. Protecting this website and the IT applications supporting highway management, maintenance and customer service is critical, so when the backup solution became more of a challenge than an asset, the IT Division searched for a replacement.
“Our backup solution was becoming outdated,” said Sukri. “There were times when backup was slow and recovery was unreliable, making it more difficult to meet recovery objectives in the business continuity standards required by our government.”
To strengthen its backup and disaster recovery (DR) strategy, LLM turned to partner Infinity Consulting Technology (ICT) for a cloud backup and DR service called Aegis, which manages and monitors customers’ daily backup and recovery. Aegis also offers complimentary and unlimited DR resources, including dedicated drill personnel who assist customers when performing drills.
Veeam backs up and replicates 10 TB across more than 20 physical and virtual machines (VMs) on premises and off premises to Aegis. Veeam Cloud Connect links LLM to Aegis, enabling the agency to extend data protection to the cloud without the cost and complexity of managing a second infrastructure. Backups and replicas are encrypted and secure, which increases ransomware protection.
“Veeam backs up any workload on any hardware to any storage, so we don’t have to invest in new resources. And Veeam is more affordable than our previous solution, reducing our annual IT costs by 50%,” said Sukri.
Instead of a costly capital expenditure to build and maintain a separate DR structure, LLM also opted for an affordable operating expenditure for DR as a Service (DRaaS) from Aegis.
