Bechtle as Trusted Advisor – New Hardened Backup Solution for WGV

WGV-Versicherung – Bechtle as Trusted Advisor: A new, hardened backup solution for WGV.

Perfect protection, low premiums with high performance and top claims service - this is what the municipal, church and social institutions and special-purpose associations in Württemberg insured by Württembergische Gemeinde- Versicherung a.G. (WGV) rely on. When designing a new backup solution and selecting the individual components, WGV relied on Bechtle as a “Trusted Advisor”. Bechtle not only provided advice and support in the design and implementation of the new solution, but also took into account WGV's compliance guidelines and service level agreements. Training courses for the IT administrators rounded off the overall concept.

Project details.

Services

Professional Services
Server & Storage

Industry

Financial / Insurance

Manufacturer

HPE, Veeam

Company size

250 – 1,500 employees

Challenge.

Württembergische Gemeinde-Versicherung a.G. (WGV), headquartered in Stuttgart, offers needs-based insurance cover according to the motto: “Well insured. And good is good.” What makes it special is that the mutual insurance association belongs to its customers. With around 100 different insurance products, they can protect themselves and get a lasting feeling of being “well insured”. With passion, expertise, innovative solutions, a good price-performance ratio across all products and a service that is as good as it is personal - on site and digitally - WGV enjoys a high level of trust among its policyholders. It has earned this trust not least through the secure handling of policyholders' sensitive data, fast response times to claims notifications and their settlement. All data must therefore be available at WGV at all times. In the event of a failure, it should be possible to restore it quickly from the backup. As the life cycle of the previous backup solution was coming to an end, WGV was therefore looking for a new solution that would meet the increased requirements for security, performance and retention times. The new backup solution was to supplement some of the existing hardware with new components where technologically feasible. In order to provide the best possible protection against manipulation, the backup data was also to be stored immutably. The new backup had to have a fast recovery time (recovery time objective - RTO) and a low data loss rate (recovery point objective - RPO). However, both values should at least remain the same with the new solution.

We were impressed by the way Bechtle works, advises and communicates. Bechtle's in-depth expertise enabled us to make specific adjustments to our new backup solution. The Trusted Advisor Workshop was also very enriching for us. Bechtle didn't just implement the technology, but proactively advised us on possible optimization potential and its implementation. That helped us a great deal.

Jörg Lübkert, System Administrator Windows Server, IT Operations, Württembergische Gemeinde-Versicherung a.G.

Solution.

WGV commissioned its long-standing IT service provider Bechtle to design and implement the new, hardened backup environment. As trusted advisor, Bechtle first carried out an inventory and requirements analysis and, based on this, presented several vendor-independent solution concepts for a hardened backup environment. In doing so, Bechtle took into account the backup guideline drawn up by WGV for the data backup of the Windows server environment. Together, Bechtle and WGV finally decided on a solution with the Veeam Availability Suite backup software, HPE Proliant servers, an HPE StoreOnce deduplication appliance and existing tape libraries from HPE. In order to protect the backup data from manipulation, Bechtle also used a hardened Linux repository with integrated immutability of the data (immutability) and the immutability integration of HPE StoreOnce for Veeam in addition to the existing tape libraries. With the Veeam Availability Suite, Bechtle also implemented a multi-level backup concept that fulfills all of WGV's requirements and takes best practices into account. Bechtle attached great importance to security aspects right from the design stage of the solution and also carried out security hardening of the various software and hardware components as part of the implementation. To ensure that the backup data is really consistent and functional, Bechtle implemented the SureBackup solution included in the Veeam Availability Suite, which automatically tests and logs the restoration of the backup data. For quality assurance purposes, Bechtle also carried out extensive manual recovery tests, which showed that WGV's internal IT and administrative data can be fully restored with the new backup solution not within days, but within hours - in some cases even minutes. This complies with WGV's internal data security guidelines and goes far beyond them. Bechtle's aim was to establish these fast recovery times. As Trusted Advisor, the IT service provider recommended to WGV in an initial workshop that the existing data backup guidelines be optimized and RTO and RPO further improved. To this end, WGV also introduced role-based access control (RBAC) to allow only the core team of administrators to access the backup infrastructure, thereby controlling access rights and ensuring data protection. The role concept reflects the physical conditions at WGV and is continuously developed further by the insurance company. After handing over and instructing the WGV administrators, Bechtle trained them over several days at its in-house training center. This enabled them to familiarize themselves with the new solution in detail and also provided them with the necessary knowledge to fully exploit the possibilities and functions of the Veeam Availability Suite.

Advantages/benefits.

The new solution provides WGV with a powerful, secure and high-performance backup environment. Bechtle's recommendations as a trusted advisor also led to an improvement in compliance guidelines and thus to shorter recovery times (RTO) and less data loss (RPO). The chosen technology enabled WGV to remain technology-agnostic and to integrate various components into the new backup environment. During implementation, Bechtle took over important areas for WGV such as training, delivery, implementation, on-the-job training and the targeted training of administrators. Together, WGV and Bechtle will continue to develop the new backup solution in line with current requirements in the future.