Wabash National Modernizes Data Protection with Cloud Data Management

60%

TCO savings

RTOs

Near-zero RTOs (sec. vs mins)

RPOs

Decreased RPOs for SQL, Exchange

Overview

Wabash National (NYSE: WNC), headquartered in Lafayette, Indiana, is North America’s leading producer of semi-trailers and liquid transportation systems. Since 1985, the company has delivered best-in-class transportation equipment that enables the country’s largest trucking fleets to operate more efficiently.

“At Wabash, time and money need to be invested in optimizing and growing the business. We were expending precious resources on legacy backup solutions that did not help us build equipment,” says Steve Bunch, Server and Storage Manager at Wabash National.

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Wabash National, America's leading trailer producer, relies on Rubrik to deliver automated backup and instant recovery for mission critical workloads. Wabash uses Rubrik to archive data to public cloud.

We tested recovery times to complete a file restore on various solutions and discovered Rubrik’s capabilities were unparalleled.

Steve Bunch
Server and Storage Manager

Featured Product: Rubrik Cloud Data Management

Challenges

Complex, costly upgrades in scaling capacity
SQL and Exchange application stun
Lengthy RTOs and performance limitations on recovery
Bloated, complex ROBO backup architecture

Results

TCO savings of 60%
Decreased RPOs for SQL, Exchange
Near-zero RTO (seconds vs. 45 min)
Data center footprint reduction (10U vs. 2U)
Single pane of management across HQ and remote sites

The Solution

VM and file-level backup and recovery
Object-level search and recovery
Data archival to public cloud
Software appliances for ROBO

Challenges

Wasting time and money on legacy backup solutions

At Wabash, IT is focused on adopting converged architectures to streamline its 100% virtualized data centers. “Our company has made multiple acquisitions, resulting in a hodgepodge of technology solutions,” explains Bunch.

“We brought in a backup administrator to streamline our multiple backup solutions and firmware upgrade process, plus prune the environment. It took us six months to deliver good backups at our eight data center sites after we dedicated one full-time employee to managing our backup infrastructure. The backup software solutions we were using were outdated, required multiple patches, frequent firmware updates, and hands-on management of day-to-day backup jobs. With backup storage, it was an endless cycle. Each year, we would add another shelf, which meant more dollars spent on power and cooling in addition to disk.”

With backup storage, it was an endless cycle. Each year, we would add another shelf, which meant more dollars spent on power and cooling in addition to disk.

Steve Bunch
Server and Storage Manager

Solutions

Eliminating backup complexity and cloud-ing out

After realizing just how much time and money were dedicated to cleaning up backup, Bunch and his team kicked off a search for a new backup solution. “We tested recovery times to complete a file restore on various solutions and discovered Rubrik’s capabilities were unparalleled,” recalls Bunch. “Rubrik’s ability to intelligently utilize public cloud resources was extremely appealing. We saw the opportunity to limit our power/cooling spend onsite by using cloud. While we had moved off tape four years ago, we were still stuck dumping our data to our increasingly large collection of physical disks.”

In addition, Rubrik has helped Wabash reduce its TCO by 60% after eliminating backup software licensing, inefficient backup storage capacity, as well as reducing archival storage power and cooling requirements.

We tested recovery times to complete a file restore on various solutions and discovered Rubrik’s capabilities were unparalleled.

Steve Bunch
Server and Storage Manager

Featured: Rubrik CDM

The Results

Lightning-fast time to deployment

"We used to spend 6-8 hours setting up a new site backup environment, and then ensuring jobs completed successfully on a daily basis. We got Rubrik up and running in 30 minutes. Once we had it running, we threw our highly transactional SQL applications onto the system."

Higher performance of backups

"We’re seeing faster backups. Exchange used to take an hour to backup using our old backup software. Once Rubrik was in place, it took ten minutes to backup our 10TB Exchange environment."

Higher frequency of backups for our large databases

"We stopped doing backups during the day for our highly transactional SQL databases due to application stun. Rubrik diminished the app stun effect, allowing us to go from snapshotting our databases once every night to once every six hours."

Ease of management by eliminating unnecessary process

"If we stamp a new VM at another site, it takes about 15 minutes to locate and attach daily, monthly, and annual job assignments. With Rubrik, it’s just a matter of searching for the server and assigning a SLA policy. We don’t think about crafting job schedules. Rubrik takes care of that once you specify your RTOs and RPOs."

Instant search with global indexing

"Locating files and applications is night and day when comparing Rubrik to our previous solution. I don’t have to go back to the customer and ask for the exact file path. It took a while to dig in and find the file. With Rubrik, I’m already searching as I type the file or application name. This increases our recovery times by 5-10x."

Near-zero RTO that doesn’t compromise performance

"We can spin up VMs now in seconds and have them running before I even log into our ESXi console. No degradation in performance either. Previously, if I had to bring up an Exchange server, it would not be functional for end users until we Storage vMotion’d to our production SAN. This took up to 45 minutes to get it up and running."

Seamless integration with cloud

"We’re now using Rubrik to actively archive to the cloud. We keep 30 days on the cloud, with all data off-site indexed and easily accessible via search."

Reduced datacenter footprint

"We have reduced our datacenter footprint from 10U to 2U, along with the associated power/cooling costs, data center space, and complexity."

Remote site management

"We have eliminated the complex backup environment at multiple sites by deploying the Rubrik Edge software appliances, resulting in a footprint reduction of as much as 25% of the server infrastructure per site. Edge allows us to manage all backups from a single pane of glass and allow for quicker restores and offsite DR."