WienIT reduces backup storage by 50% and gears up for NIS2 with Veeam

Wiener Stadtwerke Group is the most important infrastructure service provider in and around Vienna, widely recognized around the world for its outstanding quality of life. The group is focused on climate change mitigation and plays a big part in that outstanding quality of life. Among others, group companies include Wien Energie, Wiener Netze, Wiener Linien, Wiener Lokalbahnen, WIPARK, immOH!, GWSG, Bestattung Wien und Friedhöfe Wien. Companies, that stretch from mobility to energy and keep the federal capital running.

“As central IT and business services partner of the Wiener Stadtwerke Group, we strengthen the core business of all group companies with digital solutions,” said Michael Dexheimer, Service Portfolio Manager Platform Services at WienIT. “We provide the IT that supports the individual group companies to accomplish their tasks, no matter whether it is digital workplaces, business processes powered by web or SAP solutions, or human resource workflows. The smooth operation of all IT services and processes is our primary objective.”

And because IT also continuously evolves, the organization is always looking to make things even better. When WienIT reviewed its data protection processes, it realized that its existing solution was not meeting expectations. The company wanted to reduce the complexity of its backup configuration and improve resilience for its increasingly diverse IT environment. And all of that while ensuring highest levels of cybersecurity in line with NIS2 regulations.

WienIT chose Veeam after a thorough selection process. “To replace our existing and increasingly complex backup solution, we chose Veeam based on our requirements and an analysis of the market,” said Gerhard Josef Krickl, Veeam, Azure & Microsoft Specialist at WienIT. “We selected Veeam for its ease of use and excellent support for virtualized environments. The built-in integration with Pure Storage, which we use as our primary storage system, was also important to us.”

Today, WienIT uses Veeam to back up over 1,000 virtual machines running on its VMware vSphere cluster as well as a couple of physical servers, hosting systems up to 12 TB in size. As the company moved application servers from UNIX to Linux virtual machines running on VMware vSphere, it was able to seamlessly adapt its backup strategy with Veeam.

“Veeam delivered on our goal of speeding up data backup and recovery, which helps us keep business continuity high,” said Michael Dexheimer. “There is less risk of backups over-running and affecting our production systems, and we can roll back our environment if needed with just a few clicks. It’s extremely versatile and evolves alongside our IT environment, removing barriers to innovation.”

WienIT also selected Veeam to protect its Microsoft 365 environment, backing up emails and data for 22,000 users. With a local backup, the company reduces the risk of losing or delaying access to data that’s essential for collaboration.

“Now that we’re not just relying on the retention period built into Microsoft 365, we feel better protected and ready to respond to user requests to recover data,” said Josef Krickl. “As part of our regular reviews with the Veeam team, they help us plan our next steps and adopt new security and resilience features more quickly.”

Following a recommendation by Veeam, WienIT upgraded its data storage and now saves all backups to a central object storage system. The combination of Veeam and S3-compatible storage reduced backup storage requirements by 50%.

“With Veeam and an object storage solution, we’ve achieved a compression factor of 2.6 and backup data is now distributed redundantly in parallel across two data center locations,” said Michael Dexheimer. “The new architecture is much simpler and more robust — for example, we no longer need a separate copy job.”

With many of its clients falling under the EU NIS2 regulatory framework for critical systems, WienIT is using Veeam to reinforce its IT security. To add another security layer against ransomware attacks, the company is evaluating the rollout of immutable backups. WienIT is also considering implementing Veeam Threat Center to further improve cybersecurity monitoring and reporting.

“Our previous solution did not support automated backup verification,” said Michael Dexheimer. “We’ve changed that with Veeam SureBackup, which verifies a random sample of backups every day, giving us great peace of mind. By uncovering any issues with our backups in near-real time, Veeam ensures we’re comprehensively protected and better prepared for NIS2.”

“The update and patching process now is much easier than with our previous backup software, helping us comply with stricter patching and update guidelines,” continued Josef Krickl. “All in all, Veeam has stepped up our data protection efforts significantly — helping us do our part to keep Vienna running smoothly.”

• Accelerated data backups and recovery across over 1.1K systems
  “With high data availability through Veeam, we deliver high-performance and high-availability IT services 24/7, 365 days a year,” said Michael Dexheimer. “This is how we keep Wiener Stadtwerke Group running.”
• Reduced backup storage requirements by 50% with object storage and advanced data compression
  By combining Veeam with object storage, WienIT benefits from reduced complexity, a compression factor of 2.6 and improved redundancy.
• Strengthened cybersecurity, simplifying compliance with NIS2, the EU Network, and Information Security (NIS) Directive
  Advanced features like automated backup verification help WienIT manage cybersecurity risks in near-real time and improve business continuity. Implementing immutable backups will further reduce security risks and provide additional ransomware protection in the future.