What needs improvement with Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows?

We don't have any issues with the solution. We do not need any other features. The integration with MS Storage and Dell Media needs to be simplified. Micro Focus may be better in this area as it offers tape. We can't use tape for primary storage on Veeam.

We've had several issues with Veeam and one of our customers. For the last three to six months, the client had to deploy all of their VMs on both sides. After the redeployment, it's been easier. The initial implementation was not so easy. There need to be more error codes to help us understand when something is going wrong. The VM databases can be a bit difficult as there are not enough error codes available to understand what is going on. It would help us resolve customer issues if there was more visibility on errors. Troubleshooting is very hard. It would be nice to have some sort of GUI interface as opposed to dealing with the CLI or PowerScripts.

It basically does caching on the actual customer's machine. For example, if you're doing a trial backup, which enables you to basically do a similar thing to Acronis, where you can carry on from where you left off. The only issue is that caching is running on your local machine. So, if you have a little bit of space left on your machine and now it has a big cache, then your hard drive runs out of space, and it crashes. You don't want the tool to be responsible for breaking your machine. I've worked with a lot of tools, and the only difference between this and the normal CMB tool, which just does a snapshot and copies files, is the way it's being stored. It puts it in a different kind of file format. In terms of, let's just say, Acronis Cloud, it's got something like active protection, which actually protects your backup archive from ransomware. Veeam does not have anything like that. There's no security feature whatsoever. They tried to bring in something like immutable backups, so now you can't change your backup. Yet it can still be encrypted. It's absolutely pointless. We try to move away from the, let's say, old legacy kind of products like Veeam, even though it's still marked as one of the best backup products there is. We need some sort of security for backups and archives. I've had too many instances of targeted attacks where people will access the backup repository and encrypt the backup file, then launch attacks on the machine. When that happens, the machine is not recoverable, and you have to pay a ransom to get your information back.

While the Veeam agent is perfect, sometimes the agent doesn't install in Windows. It's too critical to uncover what's the reason Veeam is not sharing the proper thing. Sometimes, we have to install the new Windows and then install the agent. There needs to be more compatibility.

I would like there to be more integration with other platforms.

I would like to see the ability for incremental backups and reverse backups. The size of the installation can be reduced. It is currently around 300 megabytes compared with other solutions that include many features and have less of a storage footprint.

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows should improve by having more features, easier deployment, and compatibility with Unix boxes.

The price of Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows could improve.

Everything is good with the solution. The only thing that's not as good with Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows is the compression ratio and the application ratio. They should also offer better reports, for better monitoring.

The solution could always offer a bit more. With the currency exchange, the solution ends up being quite expensive. It would be ideal if they could make it so that it was cheaper for users in our region.

A feature I would like to see is universal restore. At the moment, restoration can only be smooth on the same hardware. If you have a server and you back it up with Veeam Agent, in case it fails or crashes. If you later buy a new server because the same one isn't available on the market anymore, there's a high chance that Windows will not boot up if you restore from the Veeam backup because the hardware is now different. Acronis has the universal restore feature, so it will work with generic drivers and you can restore Windows in any dissimilar hardware. As far as I know, Veeam doesn't have this feature yet.

The solution lacks instant recovery. Specific file and file-level backup are not there. That is the challenge.

The support could be improved and made faster. There is zero support. The reporting part and customization for backup policy can also be improved.

It would be ideal with we could move the data to a physical server. Right now, we can only make it move to the standby server, however, it must be the virtualization, must be the Veeam servers. I'm speaking of replication. If they could let you can do replication to physical servers - a backup from physical servers and a replication to physical servers - that will be better. Other than that, the solution really isn't missing any functionality or features. We're quite happy with it.

I can't think of an area where the solution is lacking in features. Overall, it's quite good, and more money is going into R&D already. That said, there are many things they can develop for the Linux agent. The Windows agent is quite complete. Some customers have Oracle databases and Veeam does support back up of Oracle databases. There is a specific setup in Oracle when you have the Oracle databases configured with the ASM - something related to Oracle storage back up. Veeam cannot back up or restore ASM disks as of right now. It could be something they could offer in the future. Some customers that are in the industrial sector are using legacy systems, systems that are very old and running on Windows 2000 or Windows NT, Windows 2003, and they're physical, they're not even virtual. Veeam here is pretty weak, as Veeam supports 2008 or Service Pack 1 and above. Anything before that, the Veeam Agent for Windows will not be able to back up anything. I don't expect Veeam to be releasing agents for older editions of operating systems. Veeam itself is a new company. On the other hand, if you go to the competition, like Veritas, you'll see that Veritas is a well-established company in the market since way back and therefore they have these agents that can back up the older versions of Windows.

In the next release, I would like to see it easier to implement. It may be an issue internally, where something was missed in the installation.

It fulfills our needs in terms of features. In terms of improvements, they can maybe improve its documentation.

I can't think of anything that may be missing. I have basic replication and backup in place and it's doing what I want.

Some users might think the interface could be improved. It's a subjective thing, I'm fine with it.

The only things that I can think of where Veeam can improve are in very small details. For example, there are some things that I would prefer included in reporting on backups that are currently missing. This is not a problem with the product that needs to be repaired, it is my personal use case that I hope can be addressed.

I do not think that I can be specific about certain things that Veeam needs to do to improve. They just need to continue the development to follow trends in the industry, the development of the Microsoft operating system, and incorporate new functionalities into the Veeam Agent to keep the product competitive in the market. The situation with the Veeam Agent for Windows is pretty much the same as for the Veeam Agent for Linux. Agents use the functionality of the operating systems to keep a record of the platform in a stable state. They make a snapshot of the operating system and then can release or replace the state of the operating system to a stable state from the snapshot if it becomes unstable. The difference in the products is just the need to follow the requirements of the OS version where it is deployed.

If you are doing an AIX backup then you have to use the CLI because it doesn't appear on the console, the way that Windows and Linux jobs do. It is something that I was looking for and was told that Veeam supported, but when I tried it, I found that it was not implemented well. This is actually why we are using different backup solutions. One is for the AIX part, whereas the others are for the virtualized environment that includes Windows and Linux servers. One of the biggest issues that we ran into during our implementation was that you cannot use two solutions for the same tape library. One handy feature that Infrascale has is that if the server fails then you can boot it up directly from the appliance, rather than having to restore it to a machine, first. That is very helpful.

We started with Zerto and moved to Veeam to save costs. It did the job but I wasn’t as impressed with the orchestration as it didn’t do the re-IP and spin up automatically. It caused some delays during the snapshot and replication process. We went from a 30 second RTO to a 2-3 hour RTO. Since that was still within our requirements and cost reduction was the goal, we stuck with Veeam. This experience was at my last company so it’s 2 years ago. Had we started with Veeam, it’s likely we would have been fine with it but I was a bit spoiled starting with Zerto’s polished replication. We will likely go down the Veeam route again as we are about to initiate a DR project at Ariens and believe Veeam will be “good enough.” I would like to see the capability for remote installation of third party applications added( Like installing WinRar MS Office etc..) , and Firewall for servers.

It is not always easy to update this solution to the newer version, so the update process needs to be improved. It can be a pain. In the network discovery, we still have to use the agents for some machines.

I've found a lot of difficulties on the initial setup and especially in terms of credentials. We really need a Window OS and local admin account. It doesn't like the domain admin account. it's a primary permission issue.

The solution needs continuous data protection; something that allows for continuity. If one site is failing, the other site can come up so everything keeps going. The data protection should be continuous rather than schedule-based. The predictability of the solution needs improvement. Sometimes, if it's doing something at the back end, it may go slow. Today, the backup completion took four hours, but sometimes it can do the backup in 30 minutes or an hour. With solutions like NetBackup, I can predict to a much higher degree of certainty how long something will take to complete. The user interface is good, but occasionally the change rate of the visible information is a bit slow and provides the wrong guidance. For example, the visible bandwidth might refresh only after five minutes, so sometimes you're looking at incorrect details because the refresh hasn't happened yet.

An area that this solution could be improved would be with the licensing.

Generally, I think it is a good product and there is not so much to add. There are a few places where it can be improved. One place where the product can be improved is the update time. Updating sometimes gives us a problem by taking too long or causing other problems. It's not as straightforward as it should be. I would like to have an app for connecting with my mobile and my laptop. It would be nice if I can just look at it with a mobile device from home and more than one way to connect so I would not have to always use one device.

I would like to see a more user-friendly installation process and better technical support. The troubleshooting for Windows needs to improve.

This solution has many issues with the VSS (Volume Snapshot Service) when working with the Hyper-V solution. They are related to networking and a need to restart the host. The stability of this solution needs to be improved. We used it with windows server 2012 R2 and we faced many problems related to the VSS service, the backup failed due to some issues with the VSS service and the solution was to restart not the service but the host totally to back again in full function. it was very bad situation especially we are talking about Hyper-V host with many production machines. Honestly, i ca't be sure that the reason in veeam, may be in the window.

So far, the solution has been working very well for us. Maybe in the future, they could do something better with the user interface and the performance, but so far it's a really good, efficient solution.

If I'm trying to locate an item to restore from one of the backups, I would appreciate the ability to perform a global search on the catalog. This includes all backups from the entire infrastructure. I would like to have more flexibility in terms of reporting details about the backup. Specifically, I would like to get it from the whole infrastructure, instead of each one of the jobs.

The problems with this solution are generally tied to the Windows environment. I would like to have a more automated installation process.