The challenge
Open Door Group is a CARF-accredited not-for-profit organization and registered charity that helps people prepare for, find, and retain meaningful employment, and delivers mental health, wellness, and community connection programs. The organization set out to prepare its VMware environment for shared iSCSI storage while strengthening backup protection against data loss and ransomware.
That meant reconfiguring the QNAP/Dell storage platform for iSCSI data transport and bringing the ESXi hosts onto a consistent approach to storage networking, with redundant paths and multipathing. It also meant clearer network separation through a dedicated iSCSI VLAN, and a hardened immutable repository in the existing Veeam environment - with evidence that recovery and immutability controls worked as intended.
Our approach
BITSUMMIT delivered the engagement through two coordinated workstreams - resilient iSCSI infrastructure and immutable backup protection - sequenced so each layer could be confirmed before closeout.
Segment the storage network
BITSUMMIT implemented a dedicated iSCSI VLAN approach with controlled access between segments, supporting tighter firewall enforcement.
Standardize ESXi host connectivity
The team configured the ESXi hosts for resilient storage connectivity, including redundant paths and multipathing, with a consistent, high-throughput configuration across the VMware estate.
Prepare and integrate shared storage
After the required approvals and data-protection prerequisites were in place, the QNAP/Dell storage platform was reformatted and integrated. BITSUMMIT provisioned iSCSI targets and LUNs, then mounted them from the ESXi environment to establish shared-datastore readiness, keeping production workload migration as a clearly scoped separate step.
Add tested immutable backup protection
BITSUMMIT configured a hardened immutable repository in the existing Veeam environment and applied a seven-day immutability period. Backup jobs were configured, then recovery and deletion testing verified that protected backup data resisted change during the immutability window. Validation covered host-to-storage connectivity, multipath behavior, failover, recovery operation, and immutability enforcement.
The outcome
Open Door Group came out of the engagement with segmented iSCSI networking under tighter firewall control, redundant storage paths with multipathing and failover validated, and a seven-day immutability period proven through recovery and deletion testing.
With a hardened repository and tested immutability, the organization gained a defined window in which protected backups resist deletion or modification. All scoped deliverables were completed and validated at closeout.
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