The 3-2-1 backup rule is good -- it has three copies of data, two different medias, with one off-site copy.
What is most valuable?
It is installed and configured in 15 minutes. It is reliable and you can really count on its restore jobs. It also provides very good deduplication alongside fast backup/restore on tape and instant VM recovery and allowing you to restore a VM onto an NFS mount point anywhere you want on a Windows 2012 Server. Veeam's 3-2-1 backup rule is also good where it has three copies of data, two different medias, with one off-site copy. Lastly, we're able to sandbox VMs without impacting the production environment.
How has it helped my organization?
In a fully virtualized environment, the ability to perform instant or quick restore full VM is invaluable, and because this product is reliable, I often forget the backup appliance for weeks or months. Veeam Backup makes me more confident and agile in managing and maintaining my IT infrastructure.
What needs improvement?
Since this is a pure 95 % virtualized solution for Hyper-V or vSphere, this product could do more to backup individual files, databases, and or complete guest OS. For now, I have to backup NAS, and doing this for individual files is a pain in the neck and I have to play with two different backup solutions. Also, Veeam will not backup a physical server.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using it since v6.0 in 2013. It was used in parallel with VMware VDR, and then VDP but it was quickly abandoned for a full Veeam solution.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We have had no issues with the deployment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There have been no performance issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have ordered more socket CPU licenses but I do not know if this will be easy or painful. There is nothing to do when adding clusters/hosts except checking the number of CPUs allowed.
How are customer service and support?
Customer Service:
I have, 99 % of time, found an answer to my questions or issues through customer services or via forums.
Technical Support:
On-line help is also complete and often come with interactive videos showing how and where to click, and this is amazing.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to Veeam, I used VMware VDR, and then VDP (> vSphere 5.x).
How was the initial setup?
It's complete in 15 minutes. It's so easy that even a child could schedule bakcups. It was the same when upgrading from v8.0 to 9.0. It was simply a click and wait job and completed within 10 minutes.
What about the implementation team?
I’m responsible for choosing and implementing this product. I discovered Veeam through my previous jobs. In this one, it was already implemented by local IT engineers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing costs are OK, they are a good average when compared to their competitors. The only issue I have is having three NetApp filers and not being able to backup/restore from snapshots, SnapMirror, or SnapVault. So if I had more money, I’d head directly to the Enterprise “Plus” Edition. The Standard Edition is not supposed to manage tapes or deduplication and is limited to small infrastructure environments.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I’m not a specialist of EMC Avamar, but I think that Avamar is more universal (backup of NAS for example), but it is way more expensive and complex than Veeam. I didn’t evaluate any other commercial solution.
What other advice do I have?
There's no need to buy direct attached disks, as you can just build from scratch a “Veeam appliance” with a a big 2U 8 core Xeon server with 16 GB RAM and lot of SAS disks (at least 2 RAID). You then add Windows Server OS and the Veeam software. With this setup, you won’t need extra space, separate SANs, or network switches, except maybe for your LTO drives.
Otherwise, use some VMs for Veeams and separate the proxy so you can make your big physical server a repository. Do not allow your physical server to backup your ESXi hosts with VMFS datastores, as you might not find your VMs in the VMDK virtual disks.
Most important though is to always test your real recovery abilities and try to simulate total failures of a SAN direct attached volume for example, or even from your backup system.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Physical server backup is coming in 9.5 and works very well. Beta testing right now with this and Nimble integration. Also Veeam does back up individual files like databases and OS. Not sure why you would not see this.
Includes useful features for a virtualized environment such as those based on VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V.
What is most valuable?
It has very strong and useful features for a virtualized environment such as those based on VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V. The backup software management is user friendly.
How has it helped my organization?
Backing up a virtual environment is quicker than our previous solution.
What needs improvement?
I am expecting better support for physical tape copy. Support for backing up physical servers from the open area such as Windows and Linux servers with bare-metal restore functionality needs improvement. Support for the NDMP protocol for the several NAS devices.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using it for years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
I had some issues at the start of the project with the performance. The problem was solved after analyzing and setting changes. I have not solved an issue with MS SQL Always-on servers with transaction lag backup. The case has so far been opened for half-year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There have been no performance issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's been able to scale for our needs.
How are customer service and technical support?
They are very useful.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I am currently also using using HPE Data Protector and Unitrends UEB.
How was the initial setup?
It was very simple, but after deploying the software it needed improvements in the settings to reach the goal.
What about the implementation team?
We did it in-house.
What other advice do I have?
Look at the price for the support. It is very high. Close the deal with -5 years support from the beginning.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We're business partners
Veeam is always improving the tape support but whether they go the Physical server route that is to still be seen. They do have the Endpoint backup software which does work very well as I use that on my physical backup servers for Veeam.
Many valuable features. The rest of the field is playing catchup.
What is most valuable?
There are so many valuable features but my favourites would have to be Instant Recovery especially when you have very demanding RTO's imposed on you. Virtual lab is also a brilliant feature for spinning up a DR/Test environment for your replicas.
How has it helped my organization?
It's afforded our organisation peace of mind knowing that we have reliable, fast and a cost effective backup solution for our virtual environment which also allows us to provide our developers with both test and pre-prod environments in hours rather than days.
I am currently running secondary backup jobs (B2Bcopy) for our business critical virtual machines which are located at an offsite repository in addition to replication jobs which are located at our disaster recovery site without any issues.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used this product for 5 years or so and will not use any other solution for my virtual environment.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Deploying Veeam was easy and I made sure to take a few minutes to design my solution prior to installing it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I did not have any issues with stability post installation. I did initially encounter a few errors with my replication testing but these were down to my misconfiguration.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Very good.
Technical Support:
I've not had any issues with technical support who are very competent and generally resolve most issues whilst you are on the phone.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used vRanger Pro when it first came out but I found it frustrating.
How was the initial setup?
I had no issues with the initial setup.
What about the implementation team?
I implemented the solution.
What other advice do I have?
I'd say plan your implementation carefully and work out how many proxy servers you require for your virtual estate and take note of resource requirements.
I would rate Veeam a 5 against the competition but it's no contest in my opinion because the rest of the field is playing catchup.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
It has allowed us to restore files, emails and entire servers and it scaled well for our organization.
What is most valuable?
Instant recovery of an entire VM, as there are times when I need to do it.
How has it helped my organization?
We no longer use tapes. The restoration of files, email and entire servers have been reduced to mere minutes instead of hours or days, which it was at times.
What needs improvement?
Support for physical servers. Although we are continuing to virtualize all of our servers; there are, at this time, a few physical servers in our organization. They must be backed up as well. Currently, we have to use another vendor to backup these servers.
For how long have I used the solution?
I’ve been using Veeam Backup and Replication for about two years now.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
No issues encountered.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
None so far and I don’t expect to have any issues with stability in the future.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
For our organization, it has scaled exceptionally well.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
They have taken care of our needs, and been there each step of the way for us, so I would rate it as exceptional.
Technical Support:
We have not had to place many calls with technical support. You could say this fact says a lot about the stability and ease of deployment. There have been a few times we have called and each time our issue was resolved in a very reasonable time frame. The engineers are very knowledgeable, not only of their product, but also of the platform & hypervisor that we use in our datacenter.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Yes we did. Agents and licensing were getting too cumbersome and performance was not where we felt it should be.
How was the initial setup?
It was straightforward,
What about the implementation team?
We did it in-house.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Lets just say that Veeam B&R met or exceeded what the competition provided.
What other advice do I have?
Do your homework. Run a demo of the software. And for any backup solutions remember the three “P’s”. Plan, Plan and Plan
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
I just wanted to add-on to what Dmitry said regarding Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE. I would highly recommend this product as well as it is very simple to setup and use, and supports Windows Server 2008 or later. It also integrates directly with Veeam Backup & Replication v8 Update 2 or higher so that you can manage your physical endpoint backup repositories, restore points and much more from one central location.
Two features are unmatched compared to other products: SureBackup and the possibility of Replication (and Virtual LAB).
What is most valuable?
Two features are unmatched compared to other products: SureBackup and the possibility of Replication (and Virtual LAB). These are a “must”.
How has it helped my organization?
The tool SureBackup allows me to check, once a month in my case, the situation of my backups: I always have the truth about my backups. Regarding the tool Replication, we use it for customers who do not have large financial resources, while allowing us to have the opportunity to restore their ambient edi production in the shortest time possible.
What needs improvement?
There is always scope for improvement (in fact with the v8 version there will be improvements in fact!), But already it is great!
For how long have I used the solution?
For 1 year.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
The deployment of this product is the most simple there is. Following step by step instructions in 10 minutes is all set.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No problem of stability. At most problems can occur with very large volumes of data (for example, VM that occupy more than 7TB data ... but in this case, do not know how many other products fail to complete this operation).
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It depends on the type of license you use.
How are customer service and technical support?
Currently, we contacted the Customer Service who promptly provided us answers KB related. Little else (and I would say that is a good thing.)
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before using VEEAM, we were using Symantec Backup Exec. Unfortunately, it gave us many problems. Especially for some customers: it signaled the completion of backups, while in fact created only empty files.
How was the initial setup?
As mentioned in a previous question, is extremely simple and direct.
What about the implementation team?
All the infrastructure of our customers have been fully designed and implemented by us.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Given the simplicity of installation and implementation, its initial cost is very low. Of course, having the ability to automate the verification of backups, having the ability to perform a restore also from the Help Desk group and, finally, having very few problems with backup, keeps management costs remaining low.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We also evaluated the product of StorageCraft but, I would say, is too young.
What other advice do I have?
It is a product with significant potential that can be positioned transversely on many case. The same reply can be made from the same VMware but we will not have a platform to test to see if it works (in VEEAM called Virtual LAb). To get a better solution, you switch to the Site Recovery Manager, but the costs are very high and certainly is a solution for much larger companies. The product is very reliable, easy to manage, and, above all, complete.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Physical server backup is coming in 9.5 and works very well. Beta testing right now with this and Nimble integration. Also Veeam does back up individual files like databases and OS. Not sure why you would not see this.