Veeam drives data protection for Volkswagen Argentina

The Business Challenge

Volkswagen Argentina is one of the country’s top automotive manufacturers. A plant in General Pacheco produces approximately 43,000 vehicles annually and a plant in Córdoba produces roughly 675,000 gearboxes—a key component of a vehicle’s transmission. Volkswagen Argentina also leads the country in automotive sales. Despite an increasingly competitive market, more than 70,000 vehicles and parts are sold each year through a vast network of dealers.

Automotive manufacturing is complex, so Volkswagen Argentina uses an application called Synatec to guide the assembly process and avoid error. Synatec helps ensure product quality and process transparency and safety. The dealer network is complex too, so Volkswagen Argentina created the country’s first digital dealer experience. It features tablets, touchscreens and virtual reality headsets that provide a 360° view of a vehicle’s interior and exterior. Customers can compare colors, components and accessories.

“Our challenge was reducing the time it took to protect the systems that support manufacturing and sales,” said Emmanuel Perez, IT Operations & Infrastructure Manager at Volkswagen Argentina. “We had been backing up to tape for more than 10 years, and while the process had been efficient at one time, it was no longer suitable.”

Perez said legacy backup was slow, which prevented frequent backups and provided fewer recovery points. Recovery was slow too, taking weeks in extreme cases. It was difficult for the IT team to meet recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) required by the business.

“System crashes are infrequent, but the latent risk and impact on the business and brand were too high with legacy backup,” Perez said. “We can’t risk an adverse effect on vehicle manufacturing, sales and brand image.”

Perez considered three replacements for legacy backup including Veeam Availability Suite.

“We analyzed our technical needs and business requirements, and the decision was easy,” he said. “When I presented Veeam to the executive team for approval, I showed them the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions. Year after year, Veeam is named a leader because of its ability to execute. The decision to deploy Veeam was unanimous.”

The Veeam solution

Volkswagen Argentina replaced legacy backup with Veeam to protect the IT systems supporting vehicle manufacturing and sales. Veeam meets RPOs and RTOs by backing up 97% faster and recovering 94% faster. Veeam also provides deep visibility into the backup infrastructure for the first time, empowering the IT team to proactively resolve issues before they escalate into problems. Moreover, Veeam saves $100,000 in licensing costs each year.

“Veeam was the obvious choice for data protection because it meets every business requirement and protects the brand,” Perez said. “In the event of a major failure, there would be minimal to no impact on manufacturing and sales.” Perez knows this to be true because he tests Veeam regularly.

“Fortunately, we haven’t had to recover in an emergency situation, but we’ve tested several Veeam features, so we have confidence in our ability to recover quickly,” he said. “Veeam Explorers for Microsoft Exchange, Oracle and SQL Server restore granularly, and Instant VM Recovery restores whole VMs. Instant VM Recovery is amazingly fast, so I’m eager to try Multi-VM Instant Recovery. It sounds like the ideal way to recover from a major crash and avoid downtime.”

Another way Volkswagen Argentina avoids downtime is through advanced monitoring, reporting and capacity planning.

“Veeam not only backs up 180 TB across 200 VMs on-premises quickly and efficiently, but it also monitors the entire IT infrastructure,” Perez said. “Veeam alerted us when we were running low on backup storage so we could prevent backups from failing and affecting the business.”

Perez said Veeam is cost-effective too.

“Veeam licensing is simple and affordable, saving us $100,000 each year,” he explained. “It’s no longer necessary to license each application separately because Veeam licenses hosts, regardless of the number of VMs. Veeam licenses are portable too, enabling us to incorporate cloud services in the future without incurring additional licensing fees. IT teams throughout the Volkswagen Group are contacting us about this savings because they’re thinking about switching to Veeam. Our team is the first to use Veeam, and we’re happy to share our story.”

The Results

• Protects critical IT systems supporting vehicle manufacturing and sales:
  “Veeam helps us meets every business requirement and protect the brand,” Perez said.
• Meets RPOs and RTOs by backing up 97% faster and recovering 94% faster:
  “Veeam backs up and recovers exponentially faster than the legacy solution,” Perez said. “Instant VM Recovery, which recovers in minutes, was unthinkable before Veeam.”
• Resolves IT issues proactively and saves $100,000 in licensing costs each year:
  “Having the ability to identify and resolve an issue before it can cause damage to the business is extraordinary,” Perez said. “Affordable, portable licensing is extraordinary too.”