Due to the pandemic, the Constitutional Court of Spain needed a solution to store the large amount of information and data that it manages and generates. The project chosen to update and improve the data infrastructure of the Constitutional Court has been Synology and its NAS catalog with its ecosystem. The institution sought to improve the efficiency of its storage with a new IT infrastructure that would be scalable in the future while reducing the impact on data and storage consumption.
They also sought to optimize bandwidth. The Synology brand has met these needs of the Supreme Court, and has made available its high-performance and high-capacity rack storage equipment.
Synology has what the Supreme Court needs in mind when it comes to data storage and management
The increasing digitization of judicial processes and the implementation of remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic demanded a large storage and processing capacity from the new storage infrastructure of the Constitutional Court. In addition, it was essential to offer maximum protection and security to prevent possible attacks and avoid data leakage or loss. From Synology we have designed an installation adapted to all the needs of the institution that, at the same time, offers efficient, easy-to-use and profitable storage.
Clara Sauri, Product Manager for Spain and Portugal
The Constitutional Court's new storage requirements focused primarily on the need to archive a larger volume of data related to judicial proceedings . These archives included both audiovisual materials and diverse documentation that needed to be accessible from both administrative computers and virtual machines. Longer data retention and automated backups also had to be guaranteed.
The Constitutional Court had two existing installations. One was located at the main headquarters, and the other was a backup at an off-site location. Both were equipped with two RS4017xs+ drives configured to perform backups using Active Backup for Business and Synology High Availability. The main headquarters also had an RS2414+ drive , and the off-site location had a DS2415+ NAS with Rsync support.
This infrastructure has been expanded with three RS4021xs+ units. Two of these units have been configured to create a high-availability cluster, and a third unit, housed in the secondary data center, has been connected via Rsync. The function of this third unit is to perform automatic and unattended restores of backups from the judicial body's servers and computers. Together, they provide 180 TB of storage using Synology SATA HDDs and three M2D20 adapter cards for dual-slot SNVe M.2 SSDs and Synology SNV3500 SSDs to maximize cache speed.
Technology at the service of institutions
The Constitutional Court has been able to upgrade its high-capacity storage system thanks to solutions offered by Synology. They have been able to meet the growing demand for storage space, reduce costs, and do so without compromising reliability and performance. They have also adopted the backup automation and management applications offered by the Synology ecosystem to enhance data and file protection.
With Sonylogy's Active Backup for Business application, you can perform and manage backups of over 300 devices every two days. A customized retention policy for older versions is also guaranteed. For enhanced protection, Rsync allows you to synchronize multiple NAS devices across different locations, preventing issues caused by external factors. In the event of a hardware failure on the active server, the passive server can take over immediately to maintain uninterrupted data access. Finally, the instant protection mechanism, Snapshot Replication, provides near-instant data protection for shared folders and LUNs, which are replicated across the various NAS servers.
With all this, the system administrators of the Constitutional Court have been able to reduce the workload of the IT team. Backups have been automated and are monitored through email alerts and process status notifications and reports.
Digitization, essential for the transformation and maintenance of the judicial system
Technology and digitalization have become fundamental components of today's society. We have noticed this especially in the wake of the pandemic and the health crisis caused by Covid-19, where many were able or had to opt for remote work . The streamlining and automation of processes, remote access to systems and files, and data protection have become widespread and have also reached the justice system, which is already working to eliminate paper documents in the near future.
The Constitutional Court decided to invest in a private cloud, automated backups, and a scalable storage infrastructure to improve its operations and adapt to current priorities and realities. They expect this to shorten processing times and provide faster, more accurate services by eliminating the need to search through numerous paper records.
