A Backup Solution That Has All the Bells and Whistles with an Easy-to-Use Interface
March 06, 2020
A Backup Solution That Has All the Bells and Whistles with an Easy-to-Use Interface
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Veeam Backup & Replication
Overall Satisfaction with Veeam Backup & Replication
It is not being used currently in the business, but clients use it for their VM backups. It offers a very robust and easy to use solution for reliable backups. Some clients use it for backing up physical servers as well. It is very quick with the right hardware and environment. There aren't any recurring issues, so it just works, which is one of the best things you can ask of a backup solution.
- It offers various backup types. If the infrastructure can handle the forever incremental or reverse incremental options, these are very efficient on space usage.
- The interface is easy to use. There are a lot of options within the software, but it's never felt overwhelming to figure out and adjust job settings.
- Restores are simple and offer great options. Even full VM restores are easy to do. File-level restores offer multiple ways to restore files, such as to a different location, or the same, then making copies of any collision files.
- On occasion, the error feedback is not as useful as we'd like. However, the forums, KB articles, and support are always helpful.
- No other negatives come to mind at the moment. The software really does work well and there have not been many headaches using. Most of the headaches are when storage runs out of space, but that's not the fault of the software.
- Veeam has always helped produce profits over time. Being a partner helps as well of course.
- As mentioned before, justifying the cost for smaller businesses might be difficult. However, they can usually be sold on the reputation and reliability of the platform.
There are about 10 clients that use Veeam for their backups currently, which represents most of the current clients. Some of these are smaller businesses, but others have 15-20 VM's to be backed up. Only one client utilizes a cloud destination for offsite copies. The current is about what was expected. Most of our clients appreciate Veeam for what it offers, but we knew some smaller clients just couldn't be convinced to pay the higher cost. Some smaller clients also wouldn't make enough use for it, or simply don't need it if they lack main servers.
We actually have not utilized the full cloud options that the platform offers. This has been looked into, but there haven't been any situations with clients where it made sense yet. Some clients are moving some items to Azure, so that could present options to utilize the cloud restore features. Most clients have the local backups on a Synology, and then have offsite copies going to another site of theirs. Then some of these will also replicate to another VM environment at this site.
Creating an automated sandbox recovery testing environment is on a project list to tackle this year. We are aware that it offers a fully automated testing environment to be set up for confirming restored VM boots. It can also test various functionality of the VMs during the test. Once there is time to test, this is something we'll use for all of our clients to do quarterly disaster recovery testing.
ShadowProtect seemed to offer a lot of good options, and Datto is a great cheaper alternative if the heftier features of Veeam are not needed. However, Unitrends was a terrible experience all around. Unitrends support is pretty good, but there were a lot of broken backup job issues that lead to massive headaches in fixing snapshot configurations. Many of the issues required blowing away backups and starting fresh. Working with storage options was also a pain. After having used Veeam almost exclusively, needing to deal with Unitrends, by comparison, was very disappointing. I kept thinking about how much I wish the client had chosen Veeam instead. They decided to go with the cheaper option, and they ended up paying the price for it.