Disaster recovery on the menu

The Puerto Rico-based fast food company, Grupo Colón Gerena (GCG), is using Scale Computing's HC3 Cloud Unity solution which combines its edge computing solution with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to create a remote disaster recovery/backup solution that provides maximum reliability in the face of natural disasters, including hurricanes.

GCG is a restaurant management company that owns franchises of brands including Wendy’s, Applebee’s, Famous Davés, Sizzler’s, Longhorn Steakhouse, Olive Garden and Red Lobster throughout the island. GCG provides technology and operations support to its 113 restaurants and 6,500 employees. In a territory fraught with severe weather and still recovering from Hurricane Maria, GCG needed a remote DR and backup solution that could steer it clear of future disasters.

The solution needed to be simple, affordable and sturdy enough to maintain 99.999 per cent uptime with existing hardware and software. GCG also wanted to reduce the number of suppliers needed to deploy and manage the new solution.

After evaluating several options, including solutions from Microsoft and Alien Vault, Grupo Colón Gerena selected Scale Computing HC3 Cloud Unity(sm) with GCP. HC3 Cloud Unity is a hybrid cloud solution that combines HC3 edge computing private cloud infrastructure with GCP to connect on-premises data and cloud infrastructures for organisations of any size.

Now when any disaster strikes, GCG is confident their data is secure. This was demonstrated during Hurricane Maria last year when GCG used HC3 Cloud Unity to relocate their infrastructure in the face of the storm.

“When hurricane Maria hit we were able to ensure all of our data was safe even though we had no power to run the stores,” said Grupo Colón Gerena Director of Infrastructure, Ramon Vazquez Tous. “HC3 Cloud Unity provides us a remote DR solution that is both affordable and reliable. The solution combines an efficient and scalable compute architecture with Google Cloud’s always-on, highly available cloud platform and cloud-based disaster recovery to ensure our data is always protected at no additional cost.”

With HC3 operating on-premises and on Google Cloud, GCG’s virtual machines and applications run seamlessly and freely to and from the cloud. Applications created for on-premises can run on GCP without any modifications.

 

The HC3 Cloud Unity platform offers backup and disaster recovery features, such as snapshots, replication, failover, fallback and cloud disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS). The service includes a dedicated cloud-based HC3 node running on GCP, assistance configuring protection for VMs, DR testing, assistance with failover and a DR runbook that serves as an atlas for DR testing and engagements.

“Whether you’re facing the hurricane season or manmade disasters, Scale Computing can help you build a cloud-based disaster recovery plan that meets your needs,” said Jeff Ready, CEO at Scale Computing. “With Scale Computing HC3 Cloud Unity, we bring the power and reliability of Google Cloud‘s infrastructure to you without the hassle and expense of additional third-parties.”