Southend-on-Sea City Council has selected Veeam Data Cloud Vault to hold an off-site, immutable and air-gapped copy of its Microsoft Azure backups. The UK council says the service gives it a cloud-based disaster recovery repository located away from its existing local backup sites.
The deployment reflects a change in the council’s IT estate. It initially used Veeam to protect about 500 VMware virtual machines running on premises. As workloads moved to the cloud, that footprint shifted to roughly 100 virtual machines on premises and another 100 in Microsoft Azure. The council’s account does not specify how the Azure backup data is transferred into Vault or provide details on retention periods, recovery objectives or service configuration.
From local copies to an off-site vault
Richard Roberts, senior infrastructure engineer at the council, said the security team made immutable backups a requirement. He said the council’s services support vulnerable people, making timely access to data and protection against data loss important priorities.
Roberts said the council replaced an earlier backup product with Veeam and found the replacement more reliable and easier to configure and manage. The previous product has not been identified by the council, so the specific system that Veeam replaced remains unknown.
Before adopting Data Cloud Vault, the council kept backups at two local sites. The new arrangement adds a copy held in a location away from Essex, according to Roberts. Veeam is responsible for maintenance and updates for Vault, he said, shifting those operational tasks to the service provider.
Immutability is intended to prevent backup data from being altered or deleted during a defined protection period, while an air-gapped copy is separated from the systems it protects. Together, those properties can provide an additional recovery option if production systems or more directly connected backups are compromised. The council did not disclose its specific technical controls or recovery testing procedures.
Backup product history remains unclear
The council’s announcement does not name its former backup supplier. Information in Roberts’ professional profile lists experience with several products, including Backup Exec and NetBackup, but that history does not establish which product the council previously used.
Separately, Cloud Software Group announced that future sales of Backup Exec would end on March 31, 2026, while support is scheduled to continue through April 30, 2029. Those dates provide context for organizations reviewing backup platforms, but there is no disclosed evidence connecting that product’s sales status to Southend-on-Sea’s decision.
The council’s case illustrates a hybrid protection pattern in which virtual machines remain across local infrastructure and Azure, while an off-site service holds an additional backup copy. The available details describe the scale of the council’s current virtual machine estate and its choice of Vault, but do not quantify backup volumes, costs or recovery performance.
