Good Health Ltd

Enhancing Business Continuity with AWS S3: Good Health’s Disaster Recovery Solution

About Good Health NZ

Looking for strategic guidance for its disaster recovery plan, New Zealand supplements leader Good Health saw a good partnership with Advanced AWS Consulting Partner, Lancom Technology. With the companies sharing an understanding of ambition, growth, market development and the necessity for sound systems to make it happen, Good Health saw an opportunity to partner its technology needs to Lancom in 2019 and hasn’t looked back since.

Good Health Naturally New Zealand looks to support Kiwis to “do more of what you love” with an enhanced health and wellbeing journey. Since 1987 Good Health has developed and produced innovative supplement formulations in New Zealand, from the highest quality ingredients. Using Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certification and with naturopathic and technical research teams right here in New Zealand, Good Health has a purpose and focus on people, quality, and integrity bringing the finest nutritional and herbal health supplements to the local and international markets. Starting with one supplement, Good Health has grown to selling over three hundred products, all developed and designed in New Zealand.

"A service provider like Lancom just makes life easier. And it ensures Good Health does more of what we love, to provide customers with health and wellbeing solutions."

Jason Yuan / Chief Financial Officer

Customer Challenge

Through a consistent focus on quality, Good Health has grown from a small operation to employing more than 100 people today. The company’s CFO Jason Yuan says this has an obvious impact on various systems, including information technology. “Everything revolves around IT, from formulation to production, logistics, sales, financials and reporting. We’ve gone from very basic systems over time to a full-blown ERP, with everything connected, and a high degree of automation.”

As Good Health's operations grew, support and investments around database security needed to be increased. With a fully on-premise server, there was a risk that any server-related issue could result in the loss of their entire operation overnight. Good Health went to market to and selected Lancom as their provider of choice. “We weren’t sure we were getting what we required for our changing needs, so we tested the market. It turned out Lancom could provide the support we needed, along with strategic guidance, at a far more competitive rate.”

Partner Solution

Due to the tight legislation around the exporting of goods in their industry, Good Health had a strong preference to remain on premise. Lancom Technology suggested AWS S3 as a storage solution to offer an extra layer of protection. AWS S3 provides a highly durable storage infrastructure designed for mission-critical and primary data storage. Data is redundantly stored across multiple facilities and multiple devices in each facility.

Good Health's Disaster Recovery solution has an on-premise service setup for their SQL Server, which is their database server. They perform SQL level database jobs, including full backups and 15-minute transactional backups. The 15-minute transactional backups are point-in-time, capturing any activity in the database related to updates. These backups are initially stored on a NAS (Network Attached Storage) on-premise and then copied to AWS S3 for additional redundancy.

Wanting to protect as much data as possible and leveraging AWS S3's flexibility, Lancom set Good Health’s transaction logs to be replicated to AWS S3 every 15 minutes, and full database backups replicated nightly. AWS S3 also allowed for more retention options with 30 days worth of data stored in standard storage. Furthermore, AWS S3 includes a range of security features to protect data, such as encryption, access control, and security assessments.

Primary AWS services used include:

AWS S3: Used as a storage tier for various services, primarily used for storing their backups

AWS Backup: Configured to take backups of persistent data points, such as AWS Aurora and AWS EFS.

The results

Yuan describes the engagement with Lancom Technology, saying, "They have proven reliable, with clear communications and a demonstrable understanding of what we need from our business systems and technical support. The service provided is very reliable, and flexibility in delivery is invaluable."

While many may see an on-premise server as 'not ideal,' it is a solution that works well for Good Health and aligns with their business needs. Good Health’s Disaster Recovery solution, leveraging AWS S3, offers a multitude of benefits that enhance their business operations. By leveraging AWS’s scalable infrastructure, Good Health has reduced costs associated with data storage and management. The solution has also allowed them to get use out of brand new hardware, which would have otherwise gone to waste.

Furthermore, the solution has contributed to a decrease in latency and an increase in time to market for Good Health’s services and products. The high availability and distributed nature of AWS services ensure that data can be accessed quickly and efficiently, which is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge in the market. In the event of the NAS failing, AWS S3 allows Good Health to save 30 days worth of data, which can be retrieved within an hour in the event of a disaster, allowing their business to keep ticking along.

Services used

Cloud Computing

Amazon Web Services
Cloud Managed Services
Cloud Optimisation

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