UNCOVERING THE LAYERS
terms of listening, and the reactivity or
professionalism of the technical and
commercial teams.
To achieve the standardisation of
Coficab’s backup architecture, the IT
Corporate team has implemented a
solution called ‘Umbrella’, built on a
central Veeam server that centrally
manages the servers located at each
production site.
The goal is to leverage a central point
of supervision with Veeam Backup
Enterprise Manager to improve backup
visibility at the sites’ level and allocate
data centre resources as needed.
This ‘Umbrella’ architecture was made
possible thanks to Veeam Backup &
Replication Enterprise, which makes it
very easy and fast to extend a single
backup strategy to all existing sites,
regardless of where they are located, and
to allow data to flow between sites with
much greater flexibility.
Before Veeam, the company operated in
very complex and different environments.
Life became easier due to the ‘Umbrella’
architecture which allows it to have a
single contract with a single license file
for all sites and for the cloud.
The solution also made it possible to
optimise, license and purchase instead
of juggling between several different
versions of Veeam and several different
licenses between sites.
As the central site of the ‘Umbrella’
architecture is located in the cloud, a twoweek
POC was conducted to evaluate
the use of Veeam Backup Enterprise
Manager on this cloud, before Coficab
confirmed its final choice for its new
standardised backup architecture.
Nasri said: “Veeam has so many
advantages that it is barely necessary to
test it beforehand, you just have to install
it as soon as possible.”
Coficab also benefits from the backup
supervision of all its sites as well as the
restoration of data with Veeam Direct
Restore and was able to reduce file
recovery time from minutes to seconds.
A member of Elloumi Group,
Coficab is a Tunisian global
company specialised in the
design, manufacturing and sales
of automotive electric wires and
cables. The company, which employs
4,500 people, is located in 13
countries with 13 production sites, six
advanced distribution centres and
three Centres of Excellence. As an
international leader at the forefront
of technology, Coficab is focused on
innovation and a range of high valueadded
products for all future trends
in the automotive industry.
The standardisation of the backup solution
at group level brings immediate benefits
to the IT team collaborators, starting with a
90% reduction in the backup time of virtual
machines at each site, in addition to a
guarantee of reliable backup quality.
“On some sites, we went from two days
to only 1.5 hours to backup all virtual
machines, for a total of about 4TB. On all
sites, the time required to perform the
full backup is now between 1.5 and four
hours, for a total of 4–10TB of data and
between 20 and 30 virtual machines. The
time reduction is invested with our teams
who can focus on other more valueadded
tasks such as managing internal
customers’ needs or conducting regular
audits,” said Benzid.
By extension, Coficab’s operational teams
at each production site also benefit
from these advantages, which result in
greater peace of mind in the event of
unavailable IT services and the resulting
business interruptions. Finally, with its new
optimised backup architecture, Coficab
also ensures that it meets the high
product quality requirements of its end
customers, namely cable companies.
Building on the success of the redesign of
its backup architecture, Coficab is already
considering the next step, as Benzid
explained: “We are currently studying the
value of setting up cross-site backups or
adopting an Infrastructure-as-a-Service
to regionalise our backup. One thing is
certain: the next improvements we will
make to our system will be based on
Veeam solutions, with the Veeam Cloud
Connect and Veeam Backup for Office
365 solutions as the 2020 outlook.”
Results
• Successful standardisation of
the backup architecture from an
initially distributed and complex
infrastructure. By moving from the
old backup architecture distributed
across multiple sites to a single,
centralised backup solution,
IT teams have gained in daily
management time and efficiency,
while saving money by optimising
the purchase of backup licenses.
• 90% reduction in backup windows.
On all sites, the time required to
perform a complete backup of
virtual machines is now between
1.5 and four hours, for a total of
four to 10TB of data and 20 to 30
virtual machines. This represents an
essential saving in time and backup
performance for Coficab’s business,
whose production is entirely IT
dependent and suffers direct losses
with each persistent failure.
• More effective backup for the
benefit of internal IT and operational
teams and end customers. The
‘Umbrella’ architecture, made possible
by the capabilities of Veeam solutions,
allows resources to be allocated
centrally for greater efficiency.
Benefits that directly impact IT teams
by providing them with greater peace
of mind and less pressure on a daily
basis. By extension, production teams
and end customers also benefit from
these improvements. ◊
ONE THING
IS CERTAIN:
THE NEXT
IMPROVEMENTS
WE WILL MAKE
TO OUR SYSTEM
WILL BE BASED
ON VEEAM
SOLUTIONS.
64 Issue 19
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