Keeping 40 plants running: How REHAU Group protects 2,500+ workloads with Veeam

REHAU Group is a global leader in its field because it never stays still, and instead constantly develops and refines its products and services. In the spirit of continual innovation, the organization wanted to extend its competitive edge by unlocking greater agility, improving its ability to respond to market changes and customer requests.

To support its core operations, REHAU Group uses highly automated production lines at 40 plants around the world. To maximize productivity and cost efficiency, it increasingly relies on intelligent, connected digital systems to control its manufacturing processes, realizing the vision of Industry 4.0.

Andreas Oppel, IT Infrastructure Engineer at REHAU Group, said: “Radical resilience is essential for a global business like ours. We must ensure that the complex industrial control systems managing production lines at our 40 plants are working reliably. To achieve this, we need robust measures in place to recover data and IT services quickly if required.”

Previously, REHAU Group relied on IBM Storage Protect (formerly IBM Tivoli Storage Manager) for data resilience, but decided it wanted a more streamlined, easy-to-manage platform. With thousands of virtual servers running across three central data centers, and the cloud, the organization needed a solution that could deliver both scale and flexibility.

“Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to our global IT infrastructure, we now host our workloads on private cloud, public cloud, or hybrid solutions depending on where they run best,” said Oppel. “Our previous data resilience solution was too time-consuming to maintain and difficult to use. We began looking for an alternative to deliver security, high availability, and resilience for all mission-critical workloads, no matter where they run.”

To make its goal of radical resilience for its global business a reality, REHAU Group chose Veeam. First, the organization moved the systems running at its plants to Veeam Data Platform. Next, REHAU Group consolidated its enterprise architecture, moving from 40 independent Veeam environments to just six regional clusters, increasing efficiency and simplifying management.

“Veeam is fast, user-friendly and 100% reliable,” said Oppel. “The Veeam team always responds quickly and effectively. If a virtual server is protected by Veeam, we don’t have to worry about recoverability or data portability.”

Today, REHAU Group protects 1,400 workloads running on 80 physical servers with VMware vSphere virtualization and in the Microsoft Azure public cloud, 1,130 distributed virtual servers on Nutanix AHV, and some physical plant control workstations with Veeam. The company runs a wide range of systems on various operating systems, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Rocky Linux, Ubuntu Server, and Microsoft Windows.

“Using agent-based backups from Veeam, we can easily protect mission-critical workstations that control production equipment, programmable logic controllers, and connected Industry 4.0 automation solutions,” said Oppel. “With Veeam, we can restart production lines much faster after hardware failures and other incidents, which takes pressure off staff on the factory floor and protects our competitive edge.”

To reduce costs and modernize its IT, REHAU recently migrated its 40 distributed server clusters to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure. Using Veeam, REHAU Group has a single solution for backing up and recovering servers across multiple hypervisors, improving flexibility and streamlining operations. By deploying Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager, REHAU Group stays on top of its large-scale deployment, with a single management solution that provides a unified view of all systems.

Additionally, REHAU Group adopted Veeam Universal Licenses (VUL), substantially reducing management overhead and gaining flexibility to use its licenses across all clusters, platforms, and environments.

“Before, we had around 40 separate license agreements,” said Oppel. “Keeping track of everything was complex, and each agreement needed to be expanded and renewed at different times. It was a lot of work that we don’t have to worry about now.”

REHAU Group is also rolling out the most recent release of Veeam Data Platform using the new Veeam Software Appliance deployment option. “Our backup servers protect global processes and transactional databases, so we need to minimize maintenance windows,” said Oppel. “With the new Veeam Software Appliance, installing security patches is automated. We can improve robustness and security with just a single click in the modern management user interface, which is so much faster than the half a day it used to take us before.”

The lack of vendor lock-in and the increased flexibility offered by Veeam delivers many benefits. “For my personal lab environment, I use Proxmox VE virtualization and benefit greatly from Veeam’s deep ties to its community,” said Oppel. “It’s amazing that I can take advantage of an enterprise-grade solution with outstanding performance and capabilities, protecting my personal data with the same tools and resilience as our mission-critical business information.”

• Protects 2,500+ workloads with one resilience platform across hybrid IT
  Using Veeam, REHAU Group can use a single data resilience solution across all its platforms, including VMware vSphere virtualization in its main data centers, Microsoft Azure public cloud, its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, and mission-critical physical workstations controlling production lines.
• Replaces 40 licensing agreements with flexible, centralized control
  “With Veeam Universal License, we can use our licenses much more flexibly as needed across 40 environments in the data centers, at our plant locations, and in the cloud,” said Oppel. “This approach aligns perfectly with our IT strategy to deliver tailored, cost-efficient solutions to all divisions and group businesses.”
• Turns half-day maintenance windows into single-click updates
  “Moving to the latest release of Veeam Data Platform with Veeam Software Appliance deployment based on a hardened Linux-powered foundation saved us a lot of time,” said Oppel. “We can now update our backup and recovery environment with a single click in the management panel, making the process much more automated, easier, faster, and safer.”