Veeam Data Platform vs. Veritas Backup Exec

We have a small deployment with a handful of physical hosts and two dozen or so virtual servers. It's been a perfect fit for us to manage all those backups and to restore entire systems from or even pull specific files/folders from a backup as needed if just a few things need changed/rolled back.

Incentivized

Backup Exec works well generally in most environments or situations. The licensing can potentially be a nightmare, but manageable if you have a decent reseller. Backing up and restoring from physical tapes which is not all that common is not as reliable as when backing up and restoring from datastores that reside on hard drives or digital media. It does a good job with large or small backup jobs. Backing up and managing SQL backups requires additional licenses and be a bit clunky. If you are very careful (which you should be anyway) and document as you build these backups you will get better at managing them. Regarding a virtual environment, I have limited experience in that arena, but have done it. Backup Exec can backup VMware environments, but honestly we moved to Unitrends to backup our VM's and are much happier with the backup process. However, restoring a VM in Unitrends can be tedious compared to Backup Exec.

Incentivized

• File-level restore is quick, reliable, and much simpler than other platforms I've used
• Replication is extremely simple to configure and test
• Agent setup for user endpoints and subsequent backup storage is incredibly simple
• Cloud repository configuration is extremely straightforward and well-documented

Incentivized

• Manage agent based backups - It is easy to schedule and monitor backups. Verifying backups is done for all jobs. Backup performance is excellent.
• Provide a wide ranging contingent of backup options - Despite providing a dizzying array of backup options, it is easy to schedule individual or recurring jobs.
• Integrates well with our Active Directory - Restoring even individual Active Directory objects is possible.

Incentivized

• Support could stand to improve by a bit. The level of support has seemingly lessened over the years I've been using it.
• It needs to be able to report backup repository statistics better when XFS and ReFS are in use.
• It could be a little better about cleaning up after itself (old logs, etc.).

Incentivized

• Could provide better license management from an inventory perspective. How many licenses do I have?.. etc.
• When Backup Exec backs up itself it should not select iSCSI backup targets by default. The result is recursive data backup ending in the loss of storage capacity.
• I'm struggling to come up with another con.

Incentivized

I have used many other data backup products that are on the market. I trust the configuration options within Veeam to do as they are labeled, without any specific back end software changes that may cause backups to fail if you don't use a systems integrator.

I trust the product for my own home environment as well due to relationship I have with the product at work.

Incentivized

This software is a mess in my brutally honest opinion. I've spent more time babysitting this software while backing up 20 servers than I did with Veeam backing up 600+. I've had multiple jobs run fine for weeks at a time that just randomly fail out of the blue for seemingly no reason whatsoever. There's no intuitive way to chain jobs, so automation becomes somewhat more problematic if certain jobs depend on other jobs. The forever incremental feature feels tacked on since the merge operation merges all your incremental jobs into the most recent backup and doesn't have the option set a limit on how long to keep your point in time restores.

Veeam is fairly simple in terms of how it is set up; its not an overly-complicated dashboard that can be intimidating to less technically-inclined users. Veeam also offers good instructional videos to help users work through how to do specific functions. I appreciate that they have specific video tutorials rather than having users scroll through a cumbersome manual.

Incentivized

It can do a lot of things on paper and sounds terrific, but in practice it doesn't do any of them well. It can easily be sold to non-technical minds and C-levels, but of all the backup solutions I've used in the last 15 years of my career, Backup Exec is easily the least fault tolerant. Unless this software is a sunk cost and you're on a shoestring budget, I recommend almost anything else. Jobs fail often with obscure error codes and the KB articles in the Veritas support portal are a mess. Within 30 days of a fresh deployment I've logged more tickets with their support than I did in 3 years with Veeam.

The Veeam Backup & Replication solution is up and running every time you need it as it was planned. In more than 3 years that we have been using the product every night, it might have failed or presented an error once or twice, so the availability percentage is almost at 100%.

Incentivized

The weekly error on save needs a manual reload from me. The SDR can't restore the virtual machine of hyperV during a test.

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

No problem for this point it is in the average.

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

In the few instances of having to contact support, our overall outcome was always good. They would have received a better score if the wait time was less, but I attribute this to the timing of support calls - it was during the previous owner's time. We have not had to open a support ticket since Veritas Backup Exec took the product back over.

Incentivized

(I assume this question should say "Veeam" and not "Crownpeak Universal Consent Platform") Planning is key. Planning your backup schedule, size, data restore points, replication if you're doing that, &c. Testing is also important; make sure you back something up and then do a test restore. Set up alerts so you know if things aren't working (or even if they are, always good to know that too).

Incentivized

It was pretty straightforward.

We used Zerto and CA Arcserve to address these needs without migrating to Veeam Backup & Replication. Zerto is a very successful instant backup and we are still using it now. It does what Veeam application cannot do in instant replication. CA Arcserve, on the other hand, is clearly lagging behind the Veeam Backup & Replication product and does not meet today's requirements.

Incentivized

If your company is looking at changing solutions or currently does not have any, Veritas Backup Exec is the way to go. Do yourself a favor and try the 60 day trial, you won't be disappointed! Very simple to use and has a great GUI, much better than what the competition has to offer.

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 only use it on the on-premise version on a single site.

Incentivized

• Confidence before starting riskier maintenance windows is a large component of what veeam is able to offer for us
• Some of the segmentation between different backup servers across our data enters causes unnecessary delays or backups that are duplicated unnecessarily
• Lack of certain storage vendors being natively supported requires hacky workarounds not fit for a production environment

Incentivized

• Backups by their very nature are difficult to quantify when it comes to ROI. Any monies spent should be seen more as insurance . If you never have to claim on it then that is the best outcome. Backup Exec gives you comfort that you can meet any downtime recovery targets set by your business and this is how to benchmark your solution.
• Conduct regular DR tests and your this will be your ROI.

Incentivized