Fortune 500 Company Counts On Veeam For Consistent, Reliable Backup Of Critical Manufacturing Systems
Veeam® Software, the leader in backup solutions that deliver Cloud Data Management™, announced that Unilin, a Mohawk Industries subsidiary well known for its Quick-Step and Pergo laminate floors, replaced its legacy backup solution with Veeam Backup & Replication™. Veeam delivers reliable, trouble-free backup and replication of Unilin’s IT systems across more than 20 manufacturing facilities worldwide, provides a Cloud Data Management strategy extending system availability to Microsoft Azure in the future, decreases backup management time that frees up one full-time employee to standardize IT processes for companies acquired by Mohawk and supports compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).
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“Veeam makes life in IT so much simpler, getting the job done with minimal effort,” said Jo Desplenter, infrastructure solutions manager, global IS, Mohawk International Services, a division of Mohawk that provides IT services. “Veeam is an enterprise-grade solution for enterprise-size companies protecting a lot of critical data.”
Unilin’s warehouse management systems contain a lot of critical data, and they play an important role in manufacturing. The company uses two : SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) and Locus Warehouse Management System (WMS).
“Our challenge is making sure our IT systems are available at all times,” Desplenter said. “Data protection with our legacy backup solution was unreliable and extremely time-consuming, putting our systems at indirect risk. If for instance our warehouse management systems aren’t protected and fully available, we would be in serious trouble. We might lose visibility into the supply chain, which could slow down or even stop manufacturing — potentially costing the company millions of dollars in downtime. If we lost data in our warehouse management systems, we’d struggle to comply with SOX.”
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Desplenter and his colleagues sought a replacement for data protection. They tested Veeam first.
“We were in the middle of proof-of-concept testing with Veeam when we had an urgent request from a member of the executive team,” Desplenter said. “He needed us to restore a corrupted file fast, but our legacy backup solution wasn’t cooperating. Our backup administrator was growing more and more frustrated, so he tried using Veeam to restore the file, and it took 30 seconds. Veeam accomplished in 30 seconds what our legacy solution failed to accomplish, even after help from the vendor’s technical support team for six months. Veeam recovery is amazing, so our next thought was ‘We have to extend fast, simple recovery to Microsoft Azure.’”
Veeam backs up 1.3 PB of data across 550 virtual machines and 85 physical machines on-premises to Dell EMC Data Domain. Veeam also replicates off-premises and sends backup copies to a disaster recovery (DR) site. Veeam will send backup copies to Azure in the future.
“Veeam is future-ready; that’s one of the things we like best about it,” Desplenter said. “Veeam Cloud Data Management will play a major part in our transition to the cloud — something we knew our legacy backup solution couldn’t manage.”
Veeam Cloud Connect for the Enterprise lets companies securely send copies of local backups to any public or private cloud. For Unilin, that will be Azure. A built-in, automatic-tiering feature called Veeam Cloud Tier offloads older backups to more affordable storage, such as Azure Blob. Veeam Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure restores on-premises virtual and physical machines in Azure, ensuring constant availability of Unilin’s critical IT systems.
Granular recovery is fast and easy with Veeam too. Veeam Explorer™ for Microsoft SQL Server recovers individual items in SAP EWM, and Veeam Explorer for Oracle recovers items in Locus WMS.
“I can’t express how fast and simple it is to recover data with Veeam,” Desplenter said. “That’s how we reduced backup management by 95% (from 40 hours each week to two hours), freeing up one full-time employee to focus on standardizing IT processes for companies acquired by Mohawk.”
Desplenter said Veeam also makes it easier to comply with data requirements in SOX. Mohawk is a publicly traded company, so SOX compliance is mandatory. Not only does Veeam ensure backup and replication are reliable, it also verifies the recoverability of backups (SureBackup®) and replicas (SureReplica).
“Shortly after installing Veeam, we began replicating backups of our IT systems to our DR site — a key component of our DR strategy that legacy backup had failed to deliver reliably and required a lot of follow-up and management from our backup administrators.” Desplenter said. “On top of that, we started replicating production-critical IT systems. Veeam delivers this make-or-break component right out of the box. We were floored. Companies need solutions they can rely on, and Veeam is reliable — plain and simple.”
Ronald Ooms, regional vice president of Veeam Benelux, said companies such as Unilin require enterprise-grade data protection that supports business initiatives and tomorrow’s goals.
“Veeam solutions are simple, flexible and reliable so companies are confident their data is protected and available,” Ooms said. “When they seek to guarantee business continuity and increase organizational agility like Unilin did, Veeam Cloud Data Management provides seamless protection and mobility across any public or private cloud.”
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