Endress+Hauser Flowtec AG, a leading manufacturer of flow meters, uses Veeam Backup & Replication v5 Enterprise Edition

The Business Challenge

Endress+Hauser Flowtec AG has been increasingly virtualizing their server landscape with VMware since 2006. In 2010, the VMware environment consisted of four vSphere 4.1 servers and two ESXi servers with some 70 virtual instances. The systems were backed up by scripts (vmbk) that copied the VMs to an external storage medium and ran on the local ESX hosts. These processes were very time consuming and no longer suited the purpose of virtualizing the IT infrastructure. In line with their periodical software renewal plan, Endress+Hauser Flowtec AG decided to implement a modern backup and replication solution.

System engineers Beat Müller and Markus Altermatt joined forces with Dell S.A., Switzerland to find a solution that responded to their needs. The solution had to be able to securely backup and quickly recover business-critical applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Active Directory and various file servers. Important selection criteria included the acceleration of the backup time, as well as the flexibility and reliability of the solution in different recovery scenarios.

Two options were therefore evaluated in the concept phase: First, a traditional backup concept with a product for physical and virtual servers. Next, an innovative version with a backup solution that was specifically designed for virtual IT environments.

The Veeam Solution

Veeam Backup & Replication™ v5 Enterprise Edition was evaluated along with other products in this category. Compared with the competition, Veeam’s solution stood out with its error-free deduplication and fast backup and restore speeds. Successful tests, user friendliness and the advanced functions of vPower all spoke in favor of Veeam.

Beat Müller said: “The product is now confirming our performance and functionality tests in the live environment. The backup time has been reduced considerably: A full backup now takes only five percent of the time it used to.”

Adding a Dell EqualLogic PS6000E and additional Dell servers to the existing infrastructure and using iSCSI technology in the back end have also accelerated and simplified the backup and recovery processes and readied them for a further expansion of the virtual infrastructure.

Together with Dell, Endress+Hauser Flowtec AG created a secure and easy-to-manage backup and replication solution that meets the company’s requirements for a secure virtual IT infrastructure.

The Results

Beat Müller of Endress+Hauser Flowtec AG is very happy he chose Veeam Backup & Replication v5: “The solution is intuitive and easy to use. It makes implementing and creating new backup jobs as easy as apple pie. Administrators need little training and the disaster recovery process is much simpler.”

The ease of use and the backup and recovery processes are not the only things that increase the speed of the processes; using Dell technology across the board does, too. The whole concept and the interplay between Veeam Backup & Replication v5 and Dell’s hardware save a significant amount of time.

The high stability and reliability of Veeam’s backup solution is a great improvement for Endress+Hauser Flowtec AG. The ability to fall back on a sound backup to recover a file or sever system in the event of a disaster is a great relief to the IT department. The IT department is in a much better position to meet the company’s day-to-day requirements and is looking forward to expanding its VMware environment.