What is our primary use case?
I have a customer who used to use Veritas NetBackup, which is also a very well-respected enterprise backup solution. The company's compliance requirement to have daily backups meant that he had to fix issues even if that meant staying after work hours.
Veritas was doing a great job backing up his environment, but every weekend, he would receive a notification that a backup failed. He would then have to go back to the office and contact Veritas support. They would fix the issue, but he wanted something that will just work and that could be left alone.
So we did a proof of concept for Veeam and that's what happened. It was really easy to set up and configure, and he never received any notifications that required him to return to the office and fix an issue.
What is most valuable?
They introduced a new feature called the Immutable Repository feature, which helps protect environments from malware attacks that target backup file extensions. Usually that's a common trend here. Many cyber attacks have occurred where they don't just come and hack the environment, they hack the backup solution.
With the Immutable Repository feature where any customer can get any server and any hardware, install Linux on that server, and use it to conduct immutable backups. These backups cannot be modified or deleted within a specific time period. I really like this feature and think that it adds value because before that, only enterprises could afford expensive storage appliances that provided this feature.
Now, anyone, especially small and the medium businesses, looking for warm storage or individual backup storage can utilize any existing x86 hardware with Linux kernel 5.4 or above to conduct immutable backups.
Veeam is a simple a solution that's easy to work with, and they distinguish themselves in the market in this particular aspect.
What needs improvement?
The Veeam backup application interface is application-based and not web-based. At present, everything is going web-based. Veeam does have a web interface that can centrally manage Veeam backup servers for free. However, it would be great if the backup console itself was web-based; that is, the main backup applications software was web-based.
It's a Windows-based software, but it would be great if customers could install it on Linux. Veeam can do backups of Linux, but the management server can only be installed on Windows.
Better support for Oracle would be great. Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN is available, but it's a really primitive product.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been working with it since 2017. I've worked with versions 9.5, 10, and 11.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Veeam's stability has improved; since version 9.5, it has been very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of the scalability, the solution is scalable depending on the environment. That is, it is scalable to some extent, depending on the scenario. In rare use cases, it will have limited scalability.
For example, for VMware and Hyper-V and physical workloads, Veeam is pretty scalable. However, if you have a really huge Nutanix cluster and you are fixed with only one proxy, Veeam is not that scalable even though you can increase the RAM in the CPU.
How was the initial setup?
Generally, in terms of installation and configuration Veeam is the easiest in comparison to those of other solutions.
What other advice do I have?
I've been a Veeam enthusiast for five years now, seeing the product grow from just backing up VMware, to backing up Hyper-V, to backing up lots of other environments. I'm pretty satisfied with the progress they are making.
Recently, they announced a few future releases which will fill lots of gaps in the market like, for example, support for Red Hat Virtualization.
They have also acquired the company that specializes in Kubernetes backups. This was a big gap for Veeam, especially in the service provider segment because many service providers will use Red Hat Linux for their stack and OpenStack to manage their cloud, and will use Kubernetes to provide platform as a service to their customers or infrastructure or software as a service. Service providers usually have a huge number of workloads, unlike end users.
I'm pretty satisfied with the way Veeam is developing their product at a rapid growth rate while maintaining the stability of the software and its simplicity and flexibility as well.
Veeam Backup Replication is an almost flawless product, and I would rate it at eight on a scale from one to ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Distributor
Nice review. We use Veeam as well and upgraded to the Enterprise Plus license to get Nimble integration. Has helped tremendously with backup times nearly half what they were.