To protect business-critical data for over 1,000 virtual machines, ECKD GmbH needed more than just standard backup storage. They required a solution that could guarantee immutability and withstand modern ransomware threats. In collaboration with Open-E and Zstor, they moved beyond traditional NFS shares to a revolutionary architecture: a Veeam Hardened Repository hosted natively within an LXC container on Open-E JovianDSS. This setup ensures that backups cannot be modified or deleted during the protection period, while storage-level snapshots provide an extra layer of defense.
- Direct Integration: Veeam Hardened Repository hosted natively on Open-E JovianDSS.
- Ransomware Immunity: Backups are immutable and protected from tampering.
- Massive Scale: Reliability and performance for over 1,000 VMs daily.
- Enhanced Security: Regular system snapshots every 6 hours.
Challenges
Managing hundreds of millions of objects from daily backups of 1,000+ VMs caused unsustainable system loads on previous Amazon S3-based concepts. Standard NFS shares also left a potential attack vector for virtualization compromises.
In close cooperation with Open-E, we developed a solution that simply didn’t exist on the market. Open-E JovianDSS handles an enormous amount of technical detail for me and gives me the peace of mind that our backups are immutable and reliable.
Solution
The solution developed by ECKD GmbH is a native Veeam Hardened Repository integrated directly into Open-E JovianDSS via an LXC container. This architecture eliminates insecure network shares to minimize the attack surface while using 64TB XFS segments for high-speed restoration and maintenance efficiency. The system ensures uncompromising security through immutability policies managed by Veeam and technically enforced on the storage level. To provide a secondary layer of protection, Open-E JovianDSS performs internal storage snapshots every six hours. This robust environment handles the daily backup of over 1,000 virtual machines, utilizing XFS pointers to significantly accelerate synthetic full backup processing. Supported by high-performance hardware including dual Intel Xeon processors and 384GB RAM, the platform is designed to handle heavy parallel write loads while remaining scalable for long-term data retention.
Achieved Result
ECKD GmbH now operates a future-proof, stable, and scalable backup platform that ensures guaranteed data immutability for over 1,000 virtual machines daily. By integrating a Veeam Hardened Repository directly into Open-E JovianDSS, the company has eliminated insecure shares and minimized its attack surface against ransomware. This innovative architecture provides the IT team with true "peace of mind" regarding the integrity of business-critical data. The solution sets a new industry standard for integrated security by combining Veeam’s management policies with native storage-level features like six-hour snapshots and XFS-based performance optimizations. This collaborative approach has resulted in a robust, high-performance environment that reliably protects the organizations ECKD serves.
