INDUSTRY WATCH
OUR POWER PLANTS SERVE 1.6 MILLION CUSTOMERS , SO HAVING A BACKUP SOLUTION THAT PROTECTS AND RESTORES OUR DATA AND SYSTEMS QUICKLY AND EASILY IS ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL .
tThe business challenges
Customers count on Evergy to power their homes and businesses and that ’ s a responsibility the company takes very seriously . In addition to providing safe , reliable power , the company embraces alternative energy sources – nearly half of the power Evergy provides is emissions-free .
“ Evergy is focused on being a forward-thinking , sustainable energy company and that focus extends to IT ,” said Rob Adams , Manager of Systems Engineering at Evergy . “ We ’ re whittling down systems and applications to precisely what the business needs to achieve its goals and that included consolidating our backup software .”
Evergy was using two solutions . Adams said backup configuration and management weren ’ t as simple and automatic as he wanted for his team . Consolidating from two solutions to Veeam , which includes imagelevel backups , streamlined processes and recovery went from hours to minutes .
“ There was a lot of unnecessary hands-on work with the legacy solutions ,” Adams stated . “ We spent approximately 20 hours each week managing backups when what we really needed was simpler , streamlined data protection .”
Data protection is critical in the energy industry , especially when a company is part of the national electricity grid like Evergy .
In the US , the grid consists of hundreds of thousands of miles of high-voltage power lines and millions of miles of low-voltage power lines with distribution transformers that connect thousands of power plants to hundreds of millions of electricity customers across the country .
“ Our power plants serve 1.6 million customers , so having a backup solution that protects and restores our data and systems quickly and easily is absolutely critical to supporting power production and customer service ,” Adams said .
The Veeam solution
Evergy replaced legacy backup with Veeam Backup & Replication to protect data and systems required to support power production and customer service . Veeam also supports compliance with regulatory requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act ( SOX ) and Part 810 , and it streamlines data management , saving at least 20 hours weekly .
Veeam backs up and replicates 800 TB across 2,100 virtual machines and 200 physical machines to Infinidat storage on-premises and off-premises .
The data and systems that Veeam protects for energy production include engineering drawings , power plant maintenance schedules and an enterprise asset management system .
Veeam also protects systems that support power management such as outage reporting and automated meter reading as well as systems supporting customer service so people can manage their accounts online , pay bills , track their energy usage and view rate options .
“ Knowing Veeam protects these systems gives us peace of mind ,” Adams said .
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