carsales.com drives secure backup of Microsoft 365 data and VMs to Azure with Veeam

carsales.com makes buying and selling automotive vehicles easy. The company empowers customers with confidence, regardless of how much they know about the process. If customers want to buy a car, they can choose from 200,000 new and used vehicles. If they want to sell a car, they can list it quickly and easily while maintaining anonymity. Digital support tools help them every step of the way.

Technology fuels carsales.com alongside the company employees’ passion, innovation, creativity and collaboration. Collaboration is critical to the company’s success, which explains why carsales.com was an early adopter of Microsoft 365. However, before transitioning from an on-premises Microsoft 365 environment to the cloud, the carsales.com’s IT department faced a challenge.

“We knew it was our responsibility to back up Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Teams, so our challenge was finding a suitable solution that would help us retain access and control of our data,” said a system administrator of carsales.com’s IT department. “One of our key priorities is ensuring business continuity, so data must be backed up reliably and recovered quickly. We can’t risk data loss because it would interrupt business continuity.”

carsales.com’s IT department consulted the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ and narrowed their choices to two solutions: Commvault and Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365.

“We were using Commvault to back up our on-premises VMs, so it made sense to consider Commvault for our Microsoft 365 data as well, but there was one issue,” the system administrator explained. “Commvault’s user interface was complex and difficult to use, and we knew it would require additional agents to back up and restore Microsoft 365 data, making the process even more complex.”

Regardless of their past experience, carsales.com’s IT department remained open-minded and moved forward with proof-of-concepts for Commvault and Veeam.

“Our goal was to deploy a cloud-based solution that would be easy to use and could offer simple granular restore,” the system administrator explained. “Commvault was not easy to use, and it did not feel cloud-friendly, but Veeam was simple to use and was very cloud-friendly. Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 was the obvious choice, and since our experience was so positive with Veeam, we replaced Commvault with Veeam Availability Suite for our VM backup.”

Commvault had been backing up VMs to tape, but there was significant cost and time involved in this process. Recovery could take days.

“Veeam changed all of that by enabling us to move away from tape and back up straight to Azure Storage,” the system administrator said.

Veeam modernizes data protection so carsales.com can protect, control and manage data on-premises and in any cloud. Veeam simplifies backup, leverages Azure storage, recovers data 99% faster and saves 65% in backup costs annually. “Veeam is a cloud-ready lifeline for data protection,” the system administrator said.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, which resides in Azure, backs up 24TBs of Microsoft 365 data (including files, documents and mailboxes used by 1,080 employees) to Microsoft Azure Blob Storage. carsales.com’s IT department can now choose from 45 restore options to meet their specific recovery needs in three clicks.

“Microsoft 365 data is essential to all of our business processes, so fast data recovery is essential too,” the system administrator said. “Employees communicate with business partners via email, so being able to recover emails if they accidentally delete them or if they leave our company is crucial. And since we retain data for seven years for legal purposes, it’s crucial that Microsoft 365 backups are accessible in Azure Blob.”

Continuity between Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 and Veeam Availability Suite is also crucial because continuity simplifies and streamlines data protection. Veeam Availability Suite backs up 60 TB of data across 60 VMs and one physical machine on-premises and sends long-term backups to Azure Archive Storage. When Commvault backed up to tape, recovery couldtake days. Now it takes minutes with Veeam’s Instant VM Recovery and Veeam Explorers for granular restore.

"Backup to tape was also time intensive and expensive with Commvault,” the system administrator said. “But backup to the cloud with Veeam saves time and money. Veeam was 65% less expensive than Commvault, and it gets the job done every time. We also appreciate the people at Veeam because they respond quickly when we need advice or technical support. They’re always helpful".

• Protects, controls and manages data everywhere, both on-premises and in any cloud
  “Once we began using Veeam to back up Microsoft 365 data to Azure, it became a known quantity,” the system administrator said. “Backup and recovery are faster and easier, so we replaced Commvault with Veeam to back up our VMs to Azure too.”
• Simplifies backup and leverages Microsoft Azure storage for data protection
  Veeam leverages Azure-native Blob Storage for fully automated backup and recovery to protect and manage data for carsales.com. Veeam also tiers backups to low-cost storage.
• Recovers critical data 99% faster and saves 65% in backup costs annually
  “It would be a disaster if we lost all of our data, so that’s why we use Veeam — for insurance,” the system administrator said. “We know we can recover an entire system or individual files in minutes.”