Many of us rely on data more than we know. Beyond the IT applications we may use at work, there’s the holiday snaps we share, the news we read each morning, the online orders we place. We often take it for granted that data will be available as and when we need it. But of course, especially at enterprise scale, this is only possible with proactive data protection. Here’s the story of how I recognized the importance of protecting data and became a champion of radical resilience.
Empowering Colleagues To Be Productive
I have worked in IT for over 20 years. When I started at an IT service provider, I got to do everything: running cables, connecting servers, configuring networks, managing databases, and more. This exposure to different aspects of IT operations gave me an overview of how to keep a business running.
As I moved into more specialized roles, I started to focus on backup and recovery. I found it very rewarding to help colleagues by restoring files and data that might have been accidentally deleted or corrupted. I quickly realized that data protection is essential across all parts of a business: from back-office staff juggling emails, to data analysts honing spreadsheets, to accountants recording transactions.
While people working in backup and recovery are not often in the spotlight, I built great relationships with colleagues, who valued my experience and knowledge.
Discovering Veeam
Over the years, I worked with many different enterprise backup solutions. As virtualization became popular, I came across a tool that would change my life. Back then, it was called Veeam FastSCP. It promised to speed up back up virtual machines, and it delivered.
Once I moved to my current company, Dedalus, Veeam was already deeply rooted in the organization’s IT operations. My job was to deliver data protection to the German-speaking parts of the business.
When our new global IT department was created, I got the opportunity to shape and standardize backup processes across Dedalus worldwide. With 98% of all servers virtualized, our IT landscape was perfectly suited to make the most of Veeam’s strengths.
I seized the opportunity to take the Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE) and Veeam Certified Architect (VMCA) exams. It taught me a lot, helping me to articulate business cases more clearly.
Most importantly, the comprehensive Veeam training equipped me with the knowledge to fine-tune our large-scale backup solution. By optimizing the configuration to use resources more efficiently, I accelerated backups across 5,000+ virtual machines by 25%.
Thinking Outside the Box
Sometimes, we have to be creative. For example, we have a critical Oracle Database of several terabytes that needs to run around the clock. To ensure high availability, we could have set up a cluster, but the costs would have been extraordinarily high. So we decided to implement a cost-efficient solution based on Veeam Continuous Data Protection. We can recover fast when needed and it saves us a lot of money.
I’m also a fan of Veeam Hardened Repository to store immutable backups and speed our response to ransomware threats. It allows us to reuse older hardware to archive backups. By combining it with additional security features such as multi-factor authentication, we can achieve high levels of security on a budget.
Looking to the Future
Having worked with a number of vendors, I continue to be amazed by the welcoming user community that has developed around Veeam products. Big events like VeeamON or VeeamON Tour feel like a big family gathering. Engineers and specialists at Veeam are very approachable, and some of my discussions with them have even led to the development of new features.
Unlike many IT vendors. Veeam is sensitive to the requirements of regions other than the US, such as Europe, accommodating different views on cloud and stricter privacy regulations. It’s nice to feel valued as a customer, no matter where we’re based.
Next on our roadmap is the implementation of automated recovery verification using SureBackup to further strengthen our resiliency. We’re also joining the Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) program to offer Backup as a Service. This will enable us to provide an even better experience for our internal customers across various business units and regions.
Thinking about what comes next, I was impressed by Veeam’s announcements around ransomware recovery and radical resilience. Serving the healthcare industry, we’re always looking to proactively protect our customer data. Upcoming innovation from Veeam could be a gamechanger for Dedalus and the healthcare organizations we serve.