Council changes the way it stores backup data
Southend-on-Sea City Council has selected Veeam to provide an off-site backup repository for data held in Microsoft Azure, in a move intended to strengthen the resilience of systems used by the local authority. The arrangement uses Veeam Data Cloud Vault, described as an immutable and air-gapped location for backup data.
In practical terms, the council will maintain a copy of its Azure backups away from its own sites and separate from the systems those backups are intended to protect. The source material does not set out a timetable for the change or disclose the financial terms of the agreement. It does, however, describe the arrangement as a cloud-based disaster recovery vault, with Veeam responsible for its maintenance and updates.
The council was already using Veeam to protect approximately 500 VMware virtual machines running on its premises. As its workloads have progressively moved into the cloud, that estate has changed considerably. The authority now has about 100 virtual machines on-premises and a further 100 in Microsoft Azure.
| Area | Position described by the council |
|---|---|
| Earlier Veeam deployment | Approximately 500 on-premises VMware virtual machines |
| Current on-premises estate | About 100 virtual machines |
| Current Azure estate | About 100 virtual machines |
| New backup arrangement | Off-site, immutable and air-gapped cloud repository |
Security requirement behind the decision
Richard Roberts, a senior infrastructure engineer at Southend-on-Sea City Council, said the change followed a decision by the authority’s security team that immutable backups should be treated as a requirement rather than an optional enhancement. Such backups are designed to prevent stored copies from being altered, including during an incident in which production systems or backup environments are compromised.
“We have vulnerable people depending on our services, so delays in accessing or losing data isn’t an option for us.”
Mr Roberts said improving data resilience had become the council’s top priority. His comments link the technical decision to the continuity of public services, although the available information does not identify specific council services affected or describe any previous loss of data. The council has also not stated that it has suffered a cyber-attack or service interruption connected with its former arrangements.
Backups moved beyond two local sites
Before the adoption of the new vault, the council’s backups were held across two local sites, according to Mr Roberts. The revised approach adds a copy in what he described as a highly secure location outside Essex. This changes the geographical separation of the council’s backup data, while leaving the source material silent on the precise location of the new repository.
Mr Roberts also said the authority had replaced its previous backup solution with Veeam and had seen an improvement in reliability and ease of managing backup jobs. The identity of the former supplier has not been disclosed. A professional profile associated with Mr Roberts lists experience with a number of server backup products, including Veritas and Symantec Backup Exec, BakBone NetVault and Veritas NetBackup, but that information does not establish which product the council replaced.
The announcement comes after the Cloud Software Group, which owns Arctera, announced the end of future sales of Backup Exec on 31 March of this year. The available material does not state whether that announcement was connected to Southend-on-Sea’s procurement decision. What is clear is that the council is continuing to reduce the amount of infrastructure held at its own sites while retaining backup protection for both its remaining local systems and its Azure workloads.
