Unified data resilience: Powering 24/7 operations with Veeam

VDL Groep (VDL) combines craftsmanship, entrepreneurship, and high-quality machinery to drive manufacturing innovation. Over a 73-year history, the group has expanded globally through a combination of organic growth and acquisition. Along the way, the group continues to adapt its technology strategy to meet emerging challenges.

“A few years ago, we centralized IT to better serve the 100+ companies that make up VDL,” said Frank Hack, IT Manager at VDL. “As part of this transition, we rationalized our IT solutions to reduce costs and simplify management. We also introduced new automation technologies that allow, for example, a customer to order a metal sheet at 3 a.m. and have it manufactured using an automatically generated laser template. To support our move towards 24/7 manufacturing, our IT foundations must be rock solid.”

Any unplanned downtime in VDL’s digital systems could bring production lines to a standstill. With data volumes growing rapidly, the company aimed to strengthen protection and ensure round-the-clock availability.

“In the last seven years, our data has doubled to almost 2 PB,” said Bas ten Velden, Systems Architect at VDL. “It’s vital that we protect this data adequately, as it includes the intellectual property of both us and our customers. From technical drawings to maintenance information, we’re often asked to recover data saved a few days or even a few months before. Our previous approach — which depended on multiple backup solutions — was time-consuming and lacked transparency.”

With new companies entering the VDL fold all the time, the group looked for a modern approach to data resilience that enabled greater flexibility and efficiency. “We’re always seeking ways to make our lives easier while raising the bar on quality. Every time the group makes a new acquisition, we have the challenge of bringing them into our wider IT environment and ensuring their data is protected as soon as possible, with the same solutions and level of protection we use throughout our entire landscape,” said ten Velden.

To protect and unchain data across a fast-changing hybrid IT landscape, VDL selected Veeam.

“We initially chose Veeam because it offers scalability, flexibility and ease of management,” said Hack. “As we’ve evolved our IT environment over time, Veeam has come on that journey with us seamlessly every step along the way.”

VDL relies on Veeam to protect a hybrid cloud environment, which includes approximately 1,500 virtual servers and 300 physical servers, located on premises and in Microsoft Azure. VDL ICT now backs up critical data daily at minimum.

“Using Veeam, we’ve centralized data resilience for the entire hybrid cloud environment, giving us greater visibility and control of the process,” said ten Velden. “Veeam is both easy to use and widely known. When we add new members to the IT team, they quickly get up to speed with our backup and replication strategy, reducing the time we spend training them.”

VDL upgraded from Veeam’s on-premises Microsoft 365 solution to Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 to better protect its business-critical productivity and collaboration tools, while also adopting Veeam Data Cloud Vault for secure backup storage.

By moving to Veeam Data Cloud — Veeam’s unified platform for data resilience — the organization now benefits from an all-inclusive SaaS model with industry-leading capabilities. This shift has unlocked new advantages, including more predictable costs as data grows through unlimited storage, and reduced time spent managing underlying infrastructure.

“Handing over responsibility for backups to Veeam makes sense for our business because Veeam are the experts,” said ten Velden. “It stops us worrying about securing and updating the environment because we trust Veeam to do it to the highest standards. Sizing and maintaining storage for our backups is no longer a concern either, which is a major benefit for a fast-growing group like ours.”

VDL also opted for the Veeam Enterprise License Program (ELP) and the Veeam Technical Account Manager (TAM) service to help it obtain maximum value from its partnership with Veeam.

“The best aspect of the ELP is that it gives us predictable pricing if we choose to scale up our Veeam environment. The portal makes it very simple to manage our licenses, and we don’t have to go through a painful procurement process each time we make a change,” said ten Velden.

“As an organization that invests in long-term partnerships, the TAM service is an imperative as far as we are concerned. Our TAM knows our environment, our needs, and can make tailored recommendations to optimize our Veeam solutions for years to come. We were early adopters of Veeam Data Cloud Vault. Our TAM proved invaluable in connecting us with the lead developer behind the solution, allowing us to understand the product roadmap and even have some input into development.”

Together with its TAM service, VDL is making plans for a bright future. VDL ICT is harnessing Veeam to deliver exceptional levels of data resilience across the organization and smooth the integration of new acquisitions.

“Since we first deployed Veeam a few years ago, we slashed the time we spend worrying about data resilience,” said Hack. “This gives us extra resources to focus on projects that contribute to the group’s competitive edge.”

“Now when we are bringing a new acquisition into our hybrid cloud environment, we use Veeam to move the data with zero risk and within a couple of hours,” said ten Velden. “Regardless of what hardware or hypervisor they use, we can pretty much always point Veeam at their data, make a backup, restore the data in our desired target, and we’re ready to go. This translates into agility for VDL, helping us act fast on new opportunities.”

• Guarantees 99.99% service continuity by facilitating nonstop access to data
  “With Veeam, our data is accessible all of the time, no matter what happens,” said Hack. “This helps us in our transition to 24/7, automation-driven IT delivery while retaining the VDL reputation for exceptional quality.”
• Reduces risk of data loss virtually to zero with comprehensive backups
  VDL ICT protects data across a fast-changing hybrid IT environment and its business-critical Microsoft 365 systems with high resilience at low administrative overhead, a winning formula that contributes to the group’s competitive edge.
• Cuts onboarding time for new locations to 2-4 hours
  “With Veeam, we can move data effortlessly across any platform, cloud, or infrastructure, which gives VDL modernization options that simply weren’t possible before,” said ten Velden. “It also gives us the freedom to develop our IT strategy without worrying about data portability.”