Case Study: Heidtman Steel Products, Inc achieves 24x7x365 ERP availability and 60% faster backups with Veeam Backup & Replication

Steel Company Galvanizes Availability with Veeam, HP and ExaGrid to Meet Customers’ Supply Chain Demands

Heidtman Steel Products, a Midwest processor and distributor of flat-rolled steel serving automotive and other manufacturers, needed 24x7 availability of its custom ERP and other virtualized Tier 1 systems to sustain customer supply chains. Unreliable backups from a legacy tool put ERP availability at risk, forcing manual processing that threatened throughput and customer production schedules.

Heidtman deployed Veeam Backup & Replication with HP 3PAR storage and ExaGrid appliances to perform frequent snapshot-based backups and fast recoveries. The solution protects 95 VMs (6 TB) with replication of 7 VMs (3 TB), enables backups as often as every 15 minutes, and uses Instant VM Recovery and Veeam Explorer for rapid restores. Results: backups are 60% faster despite 50% data growth, deduplication yields a 3.6:1 reduction, restore points increased from two to five weeks, and ERP/SQL recoveries now take minutes—delivering the around-the-clock availability Heidtman requires.

Heidtman Steel Products, Inc

Ken Miller

EDI/Database Administrator