Supply Chain Leader Strengthens Azure Resiliency with Commvault: Unified, Cost-Efficient Protection for Zonal & Regional Failover

The Challenge

The customer was grappling with a number of critical resilience and security issues: first, safeguarding their core Azure workloads — including virtual machines as well as SQL and Oracle databases — required a cloud-native approach that would preserve business continuity in the face of failure. Second, they needed to architect a failover strategy that spanned not only across availability zones within a single Azure region, but also across geographically dispersed regions, all while keeping costs under control. Third, they were working closely with their Office of the CISO to elevate their overall cyber resiliency, but they wanted to do so without introducing excessive operational complexity — ensuring that backup, recovery, and security processes were integrated smoothly and managed efficiently.

The Solution

To address their resilience and security needs, the customer deployed Commvault Cloud SaaS, protecting their Azure workloads — including Windows and Unix VMs, Microsoft SQL (both PaaS and IaaS), and Oracle databases running in IaaS. Their first backup copy is written to customer-owned Azure Blob storage using a “bring-your-own-storage” (BYOS) model, while a second, immutable copy is sent to Commvault Air Gap Protect (AGP) cloud storage across U.S., EMEA, and EU regions, ensuring strong isolation and durability. They further strengthened their posture by activating the Cyber Resiliency bundle, which includes Threatwise for proactive threat detection and mitigation.

To ensure a tailored, enterprise-grade deployment, they engaged Commvault Professional Services and added an Enterprise Support tier to guarantee high-level SLAs. Architecturally, they designed for high availability and disaster recovery: zonal failover within their Azure region by placing additional LRS storage in a different availability zone, and regional failover by leveraging AGP in a separate geography — thus delivering comprehensive, cost-efficient resilience

The Results

As a result of the deployment, the customer secured protection for 11,000 VMs and 1,200 TB of database data (across both PaaS and IaaS), all under a unified platform that spans on-premises and Azure environments — significantly simplifying operations. They realized over $400,000 in annual cost savings compared to a purely cloud-native alternative. Thanks to the dual-copy architecture (first to customer-owned Azure Blob and second to Commvault Air Gap Protect storage), their data is compressed, deduplicated, and encrypted, providing layered protection while also enabling fast restores. Moreover, they achieved disaster-recovery resiliency with failover coverage across nine geographic regions, guaranteeing both performance and peace of mind.

Key Takeaways for a Resilient Cloud Strategy

This customer’s success highlights several key takeaways for any organization moving to the cloud.

• Unified platform matters: Extending an existing on-premises protection platform into the cloud preserves consistency, familiarity, and governance.
• Failover planning is essential: Covering both zonal and regional failover protects against both localized outages and full-region disruptions.
• Cost-efficiency is achievable: The BYOS + dual-copy architecture allows this customer to meet its resiliency goals while controlling costs.
• Cyber resiliency must be proactive: Incorporating Threatwise and air-gapped storage layers enhances protection against advanced threats and ransomware.