Client: Environmental Consulting Firm with Remote Field Operations
Location: Ontario Headquarters + 2 Satellite Offices
Duration: 5 Weeks | Team Size: 2 Backup & DR Engineers

Overview:

Engaged by an environmental consulting firm reliant on uninterrupted access to field data and compliance records, we planned and executed a full-scale upgrade of their backup and disaster recovery capabilities. The goal was to create a resilient, auditable, and scalable backup architecture that could support daily operations across multiple locations while meeting strict regulatory standards.

Key Deliverables:

• On-Premise Infrastructure Upgrade:
  Deployed high-performance Synology NAS devices at all three locations using RAID 6 for disk fault tolerance, paired with Btrfs snapshot replication to enable quick recovery from ransomware and accidental deletion.
• Centralized Veeam Backup Deployment:
  Configured Veeam Backup & Replication for Hyper-V virtual machines and physical file servers, with policies tailored for daily operational workloads and long-term compliance archives.
• Encrypted Offsite & Cloud Backups:
  Established a hybrid model with cloud-based encrypted backups to Synology C2 for offsite protection, and implemented cold storage tiering for historical project data.
• Disaster Recovery Planning & Automation:
  Developed comprehensive Disaster Recovery (DR) runbooks, defined RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) metrics by workload, and automated monthly test restores for validation and auditing.
• Executive Reporting & Governance:
  Designed and implemented an automated dashboard and reporting system to provide backup status summaries, SLA compliance checks, and incident logs for IT leadership and executive stakeholders.

Business Impact:

• <4-Hour RTO achieved for mission-critical systems including field data uploads, compliance reporting, and GIS platforms.
• Zero data loss on operational workloads across all sites through reliable snapshot replication and offsite recovery plans.
• Compliance-ready architecture supporting future audit needs and insurance risk evaluations.
• Improved IT confidence with proactive recovery testing, reduced manual intervention, and increased visibility for management.