Ensuring Compliance with Secure Offsite Data Protection from Veeam and Lenovo

Data is a company's most valuable and vulnerable asset, driving decision-making and innovation but also prone to cyber threats. Digital transformation and cloud adoption increase exposure to these risks by expanding the attack surface.

Figure 1. Veeam 2025 ransomware trends report

Lenovo and Veeam have partnered to provide organizations with robust data resilient solutions. . This strategic alliance provides comprehensive, secure, scalable security solutions, including data encryption, backup and recovery, access control, and compliance management. Lenovo, in partnership with Veeam, offers an integrated solution for zero trust data resilience by combining high-performance Lenovo ThinkSystem servers and ThinkSystem DE/DM/DG Storage Arrays with secure storage Veeam Vault. Organizations can implement a secure, scalable, and simplified strategy following the 3-2-1 rule.

This solution provides immutable, air-gapped storage to meet stringent compliance mandates, automates retention policies, and significantly reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to legacy systems.

Ensuring continuous compliance amid evolving regulatory requirements

For industries like healthcare, finance, and the public sector, compliance is not just an IT function — it is a strict legal requirement. This becomes more complicated as regulations change across different regions.

Without a modern and robust compliance strategy, organizations face significant risks during events like compliance audits. Many organizations discover that their retention policies are inconsistent with regulations and that their ability to recover data is compromised by aging, inaccessible infrastructure, and siloed, legacy data management solutions. This lack of centralized management and immutable, air-gapped protection exposes them to significant regulatory fines, high operational costs from legacy systems, and increased vulnerability to cyberthreats. The inability to guarantee data integrity and availability can lead to failed audits, financial penalties, and a loss of confidence in the organization's compliance posture.

The Lenovo and Veeam solution for data resilience modernizes the archiving process, ensuring data is secure, compliant, and always available. The solution integrates Lenovo ThinkSystem data storage, Veeam Data Platform with Veeam Vault on a foundation of Lenovo infrastructure to deliver a multi-tiered data protection strategy.

Data is managed through automated, policy-based tiers:

• Short-Term Backups: Recent data is stored on high-performance ThinkSystem DM /DG / DE Storage Arrays for rapid recovery (30-90 days).
• Mid-Term Archives: Data is tiered to performance effective ThinkSystem DE Storage Arrays for mid-term retention (1-5 years).
• Zero Trust Veeam Vault: For secure, immutable retention, data is moved to Veeam Vault, which provides immutable, air-gapped storage to protect against ransomware and policy violations.

The entire data protection lifecycle is managed from a single Veeam console, simplifying operations and providing automated compliance reporting and monitoring.

The solutions are built on a foundation of certified Lenovo hardware and secure Veeam software:

• Compute:
  • Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 V4 or Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 V4 provides the processing power for Veeam Data Platform operations and the cloud integration with Veeam Vault
• Storage:
  • High-Performance Storage, ThinkSystem DM /DG / DE Storage Arrays are used for the initial backup tier, enabling cost effective, fast performance storage for backup and recovery operations.
  • Archive Storage, ThinkSystem DE Storage Arrays provide a scalable, tiered archive storage layer.
• Software:
  • Veeam Data Platform : Manages the entire data lifecycle, from initial backup to tiered archiving.
  • Veeam Vault: Delivers zero-trust, immutable, and air-gapped storage to meet compliance and security requirements.

High-Level architecture for secure offsite storage

Figure 2. High-level architecture for secure offsite storage

The 3-2-1 backup rule remains the gold standard data resilience strategy. This rule focuses on maintaining multiple copies of your organization’s data to ensure that you can recover quickly and securely, no matter what caused the outage. We take this a step further to ensure Multiple Resilience Zones with the 3-2-1-1-0 rule. Here’s the breakdown:

• Three copies of your data: Including the production data and two backup copies. Supports direct, copied and tiered backup from Veeam and can be synchronously copied in cloud for up to 12 nines of durability
• Two different media: Store your data on two different storage media to enhance data security and redundancy. Built on object storage to be a target for Lenovo infrastructure
• One copy off-site: To ensure data safety, have one backup copy stored in a remote location, more than a few miles away from the other two copies. Can be stored in the cloud
• One copy offline: Logically air-gapped from your data center and always immutable
• Zero Errors : Works with all Veeam backup and recovery verification tests

Data Resilience with Lenovo and Veeam brings together Veeam’s industry-leading secure data backup and recovery capabilities with Lenovo’s trusted, powerful ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile platforms.

• Compliance Confidence: The solution is designed to meet strict compliance laws such as HIPAA and GDPR.
• Cost Optimization: Eliminates the high cost and unreliability of legacy systems and Data Protection Solution while reducing the overall TCO for storage.
• Operational Simplicity: Centralizes and automates backup and archive management, freeing up IT resources.
• Audit Readiness: Ensures organizations are always prepared for regulatory inspections with automated compliance reporting and verification.

Through a strong integrated partnership, Lenovo and Veeam deliver a unified, modern backup and recovery solution that combines Veeam’s secure software with high-performance Lenovo hardware that empowers customers to minimize downtime, recover any workload anywhere, and helps ensure business continuity with confidence and peace of mind.

• Multi-Cloud Support: This allows you to protect your data no matter where it resides, whether it be private, public, or hybrid cloud environments. This ensures that your data is secure and can be accessed at any time.

• Infrastructure Modernization: Enables seamless migration and future-ready performance with Lenovo ThinkAgile and ThinkSystem platforms.
• Unified Protection: Provides a single platform for Microsoft, VMware, Nutanix, cloud, and physical workloads, simplifying operations and reducing complexity.
• Verified Recovery and Resilience: Ensures clean, bootable VMs with SureBackup and protects against ransomware with immutable backups.
• Operational Efficiency: Reduces manual effort and risk through a centralized management console and standardized policies.

• Seamless Integration with Existing Infrastructure: To ensure that you can easily integrate Lenovo and Veeam into your existing IT environment.
• Scalability for Growing Businesses: Easy to scale data protection and recovery operations.

Lenovo provides a range of certified systems and reference architectures for Veeam solutions, including:

• Reference Architecture: Lenovo Backup Solution with ThinkSystem DE/DM/DG Storage and Veeam for ThinkAgile and ThinkSystem Platforms
• TruScale Backup with Veeam
• Lenovo Preconfigured Solutions for Veeam

• Lenovo has thoroughly tested numerous systems as backup targets for Veeam solutions. This certification confirms that these systems have been validated to meet or exceed both functional and performance requirements for backup and restore operations
• Certified Systems:
  • Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series - Backup Target - Disk DAS
  • Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 V3 - Hardened Repository & Immutability
  • Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 V3 - Hardened Repository & Immutability
  • Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Storage Arrays - Veeam Backup & Replication
  • Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Storage Arrays - Veeam Backup & Replication 12
  • Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Storage Arrays - Veeam Kasten for Kubernetes 7
  • Additional Lenovo Certifications reference link here

Ready to enhance your data resiliency? Contact your Lenovo sales representative or authorized channel partner to:

• Receive more information tailored to your environment
• Schedule a live demonstration
• Arrange a remote proof of concept
• For additional details, you can also explore the Lenovo and Veeam partnership web page and find more on Veeam's solutions at Veeam.com

Alejandro Perez is a WW Enterprise IT Solution Manager within Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG). He leads the adoption and integration of Enterprise Infrastructure solutions, serving as the Subject Matter Expert for targeted solution architectures. He collaborates with organic and 3rd party SW ecosystem partners to drive innovation and contribute to the company's success. With over 20 years of experience in the IT industry, he has a strong background in Edge Computing, Business Development, and SAP HANA. He is passionate about bringing new technologies to the market and developing new solutions for regional markets.