Customer Success: Stage2Data Helps Global Law Firm Strengthen Resilience
Case Study: from Fragmented Backup to Rapid Failover and Recovery
A global law firm with offices across North America partnered with Stage2Data to replace a fragmented, site-by-site backup approach with a unified, geo-redundant protection model designed for rapid failover, Microsoft 365 coverage, and cost-efficient long-term retention. The firm handles sensitive client matter files, financial systems, email, and a growing volume of Microsoft 365 collaboration data — all under strict confidentiality and retention obligations.
Just as importantly, the firm needed to avoid the cost and operational complexity of deploying and managing dedicated backup hardware at every office location.
Rapid Response
Failover initiated in minutes
Centralized Protection
One platform across all sites
Reduced Overhead
With high-performance local recovery
Stage2Data helped the client build a protection model designed around those outcomes. The environment combines local performance for critical workloads, centralized protection for remote offices, disaster recovery infrastructure built for fast failover, and lower-cost long-term retention.
“Stage2Data helped us move from a fragmented protection approach to a model that is far easier to manage, scale, and rely on when it matters. With Cohesity, Hybrid Extender, and their disaster recovery infrastructure, we now have a solution that’s built for real resilience, not just backup.”
— Director of IT Infrastructure
The Challenges and Objectives
The firm’s existing backup approach had grown fragmented. Each office ran in isolation, Microsoft 365 data sat outside the formal protection strategy, and aging backup data was absorbing capacity on higher-cost primary storage. The firm could restore individual files, but had no tested path to fail over operations within minutes if production was disrupted.
The law firm needed a unified protection model that could:
- Deliver high-performance backup and immediate restore for critical headquarters systems
- Extend consistent, enterprise-grade coverage to satellite offices without per-site hardware
- Bring Microsoft 365 under the same backup envelope as on-premises workloads
- Support failover measured in minutes, not hours, if production was disrupted
- Lower long-term retention costs without compromising compliance obligations
The Solution
Stage2Data and the firm designed a four-part protection model built on Cohesity:
1. High-performance backup at headquarters
A local Cohesity backup solution at the firm's primary data facility supports high-throughput backup and immediate restore for core production systems. Critical workloads recover at local speeds, where minutes of restore time matter most.
2. Centralized protection for satellite offices
Stage2Data extended Cohesity coverage to satellite offices using Hybrid Extender technology. Backup data from each remote location is securely transmitted to a centralized Cohesity cluster hosted in Stage2Data's data center, giving every office enterprise-grade protection without dedicated on-site backup hardware.
3. Disaster recovery built for real failover
The firm's Cohesity environment continuously replicates to dedicated DR clusters in Stage2Data's data centers, over a dedicated fiber link with a mirrored network configuration. Failover happens without manual network reconfiguration and in a disruption, the firm can initiate recovery within minutes.
4. Broader coverage and cost-efficient retention
Cohesity also protects the firm's Microsoft 365 environment, backing it up to dedicated clusters in Stage2Data extending coverage to SaaS data without consuming on-premises resources. Older backup data is automatically tiered to Stage2Data's lower-cost in-house S3-compatible object storage, while keeping data instantly retrievable.
Results
The result: A unified, geo-redundant protection model that delivers faster recovery, simpler operations, and stronger resilience across every office.
Fast recovery for critical systems.
Core production workloads can be restored almost immediately, minimizing the operational and financial impact of any disruption to headquarters systems.
Lower overhead across the office footprint
Every office is protected to the same enterprise-grade standard without per-site appliances, on-site administration, or the capex of expanding hardware as new locations are added.
Business continuity that's actually tested
Failover is a tested operational capability, not a documentation exercise — giving the firm confidence that recovery will actually work when needed.
No coverage gaps, predictable retention costs
Microsoft 365 and on-premises workloads share a single retention and recovery policy, while long-term storage costs scale with object storage economics rather than primary storage.
Why the Firm Chose Stage2Data
Depth on Cohesity
Stage2Data operates Cohesity at scale across its own data centers, with the platform engineering experience to design a multi-site protection model rather than a one-size deployment.
DR infrastructure built for failover, not just storage
Stage2Data's data centers offered dedicated DR clusters and the network plumbing (dedicated fiber, mirrored network configuration) to support real failover, not just data replication.
A unified service envelope
Backup, disaster recovery, Microsoft 365 protection, and long-term retention are available from a single SOC 2-accredited provider, removing the integration burden of stitching together multiple vendors.
