Case Study: Ruhr University Bochum achieves uninterrupted operations and high availability during COVID-19 with Veeam Backup & Replication

Ruhr University Bochum keeps operations running with Veeam during COVID-19 pandemic

Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), one of Germany’s largest universities with about 43,000 students and 20 faculties, had to rapidly move teaching, research and administration online during the COVID‑19 pandemic. That surge in digital services—central learning platforms like Moodle and Opencast, collaboration tools and exam systems—created intense availability demands, and the university’s previous backup solution struggled with slow restores and limited scalability.

RUB implemented Veeam Backup & Replication across more than 1,000 VMs, ~30 physical servers and 600 TB of backup data, integrating with Dell EMC Data Domain (Boost and Retention Lock) for faster, encrypted backups and ransomware protection. With Instant VM Recovery and Veeam Explorer for app‑level restores, recovery times dropped from hours to minutes, allowing RUB to keep operations running for 43,000+ students, secure sensitive data and significantly reduce administrative effort.

Ruhr University Bochum

Marcus Klein

Deputy Director IT.SERVICES