Arcserve ShadowProtect vs. Veeam Data Cloud for Azure vs. Veeam Data Platform

In situations where business continuity needs are high, ShadowProtect backups provide the ability to keep operations running with very minimal downtime, even in situations like crypto-locked data. If a backup server is set up in an environment to resume a live server from backup, this is even more helpful. In situations where clients don't care as much about quickly recovering their data, they can go without a solution like this.

Incentivized

For our purposes I can't particularly find any shortcomings of Veeam Backup for Azure. It has been working well for our needs for a few years now. Maybe for someone with a larger cloud footprint or more complex needs, or maybe someone who wants to be able to deploy and configure the appliance using infrastructure as code it may not be as practical.

Incentivized

For Windows, it is a great option. Just loaded it and get detected by the server. At that point you could forget about your backups. For many Linux servers, it would work fine. The webservers and scientific servers backed up and restored with no problems. Avoid databases with heavy load. We found this to be Veeam Data Platform's weak spot.

Incentivized

• You can virtualize your backups using Virtualbox, a free program that works on any PC.
• Backups are versatile, and you can back up to any location you'd like.
• Alerting can be set up for failed backups.

Incentivized

• Reduce storage costs and minimizing the impact on network consuption.
• Veaam Backup for Azure provides application-aware backups for Microsoft SQL Server, ensuring that our data is backed up and available for recovery correctly.
• Replication: Veeam Backup for Azure helps us to replicate our workloads to another Azure region or on-premises environment for disaster recovery purposes and compliance needs.

Incentivized

• The ease of use in creating jobs and adding clients enables our new and less skilled administrators to work efficiently, quickly, and accurately.
• The same ease of use is essential for junior admins as well. Backups are quickly and accurately restored, allowing our networking team to bring clients back to production within expected times.
• The ability to create a restore for testing and to remove it quickly has proven to be an excellent asset for our production and DB teams.

Incentivized

• The replication offsite can have issues over time. It takes manual involvement to keep it working right.
• SPX remote management isn't easy out of the box.

Incentivized

• Documentation around service account permissions was a little sparse when we implemented it
• It's sometimes hard to get the reason behind a (rare) job failure without going into logs
• The UI around snapshots and backups could do with some clarity around the restore points that will be available

Incentivized

• On occasion, the 'reason' for a failed backup can be a little hard to understand. It would be nice if it were a bit more straightforward.
• I would love to run the platform natively on Linux, but I don't think it's an option.
• Sometimes, locating the correct update file for the platform software can be a bit confusing. If they had an option to download the correct update file from within the console, that would take some of the guesswork out of it.

Incentivized

Plainly, the product just works. I don't have to babysit it.

Incentivized

I really have no complaints about Veeam Backup & Replication. Their service has been excellent and the cost is minimal in comparison to other services I checked out. Implementation wasn't simple and the Veeam Support team was there to help each step of the way.

Incentivized

It was so easy that you thought it wasn't working. Once you saw data and was able to recover it or do a restore with the product those beliefs in the system went to the roof. Once you get a product that does everything you want it to do, you will give it it's props.

Incentivized

It is a very robust solution that has never failed. It also has perfect integration with Windows server volume shadow copies. The processing load is moved from the backup server to the backup proxy. Increased fault tolerance: you can store data on a separate machine, the backup repository. Can perform a bare metal restore.

Incentivized

I give Veeam Data Platform a rating of 9 for availability because it consistently performs reliably in critical data protection and recovery tasks. The platform is designed to minimize downtime, ensuring that backup and recovery processes are accessible when needed.While there may be rare instances of maintenance or minor application errors, these do not significantly affect the overall reliability of the system. Veeam’s strong architecture and features like high availability configurations further enhance its performance, allowing us to trust it in crucial situations. Overall, it has proven to be a dependable solution that meets our organization's needs effectively.

Incentivized

Veeam does a good job with backing up our servers in a timely manner. We are still at the beginning of our Veeam use and are pleased with the speed at which we can access the system as well as the backups and restore points. Veeam is definitely superior to our previous backup system in terms of speed and accessibility

Incentivized

We don’t need support often, but when we do, the support has been strong. Sometimes it is hard to determine how to access support for the exact issue we are having. There are a decent forum and online ticketing system. Support for the cloud center seems to be provided only by phone, though.

Incentivized

Great support team!

Incentivized

The support team has never asked me to jump through silly hoops or waste time on pointless exercises. They seem to truly have a handle on what may be wrong. In fact, when we were having trouble getting our license renewal setup (because of yet another license migration at Veeam) a support incident got us connected to the right people to get our renewal done in time.

Incentivized

I rated the in-person training an 8 because it was generally effective and provided a solid foundation for understanding the Veeam Data Platform. The instructors were knowledgeable and engaged, making the sessions interactive. However, I felt that some topics could have been covered in more depth, and additional hands-on exercises would have further reinforced the learning experience. Overall, it was a positive training session that adequately prepared attendees for using the product, but there's room for improvement.

Incentivized

I gave it a rating of 7 because, although the online training offered valuable content and covered the essential aspects of the Veeam Data Platform, it lacked interactivity and opportunities for direct engagement with instructors. This made it challenging to ask questions or delve deeper into specific topics. Additionally, some sections felt a bit rushed, which could hinder a comprehensive understanding of more complex features. Overall, while the training was useful, improvements in interactivity and pacing could elevate the experience significantly.

Incentivized

Plan the process and then work through your plan, i know this should go without saying but its easy to get sidetracked. You tend to want to just get up and running so you can have that sigh of relief, spend the time to talk to your business stakeholder to see what goals they are trying to accomplish and how that may impact your plans first.

Incentivized

Speed, we rely on Shadowprotect to provide us with fast backups and also backups that are smaller in size compared to the other products.

Incentivized

Backup Exec was a very clunky application and took forever to backup to and restore from. We would backup to SSD external hard drives from a flash array, but the process still took forever to finish. Sending our data to the Azure blob storage via Veeam is a faster and more secure process than saving to the external hard drives with Backup Exec.

Incentivized

As I explained earlier, the differences in how each application behaves come down to configuration. In my opinion, Veeam Data Platform is more user-friendly than the other applications mentioned. I’ve already used it at previous companies, so I know what it can do and how far it can go—based on the factors I mentioned earlier that led me to choose Veeam Data Platform over the other applications.

Incentivized

In terms of scalability for our company, Veeam was able to cover our backup needs with ease. They have options for even more individualized backup if we were to need them; i.e. if a specific workstation needs its own independent backup. We have not used these resources yet, but I am confident they will be beneficial to our company in the near future.

Incentivized

• We have been with Shadowprotect for 5 years and are now only moving off of them due to limited functionality and Shadowprotect doubling our billing.
• The product now requires a lot more babysitting so I have one person just stuck managing backups, which is not a fulfilling job and hard to keep someone in that seat.
• While Shadowprotect has been fantastic for years, it is time for us to move on to something that makes financial sense and requires less labour.
• Storagecraft Cloud is fairly expensive compared to competitors.

Incentivized

• We have had fast recovery of documents when needed; sub 10 minutes from start of restore to complete and in the users hands
• Easily a value add for backing up files outside of the given Microsoft retention period; piece of mind
• Easy tool to use with minimal training required to use it and set up backups
• When you do change your cloud licensing it does require manual intervention to update backup data requirements. if the business makes changes then your backup person may not know to make these changes

Incentivized

• Recovery from Ransomware has been easier.
• Recovering files after someone has deleted them is much easier and less time-consuming than using Windows' shadow copy feature.
• Cloning the physical DB server was very nice and easy. A lot less time-consuming than reloading the OS and all the packages.

Incentivized