Fast and Stress-Free Backups!
Updated August 02, 2019

Fast and Stress-Free Backups!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Veeam Backup & Replication

We currently utilize Veeam as a secondary backup for an onsite virtual environment, with plans to make it the primary platform in the near future. It's only secondary because we have an existing Datto box with offsite storage included that is being phased out, and we don't yet have the offsite storage for Veeam established. Until we swap the two, we're keeping the older system in place. Veeam does backups of all virtual servers and stores them in a directory that Datto can access, and we utilize the older box to get our Veeam backups offsite in a roundabout way. We much prefer Veeam as the interface is cleaner and functionality is better, with restores being much more user friendly compared to the alternative we have.

Pros

  • A clean user interface, well designed - You've got your storage points, backup jobs, and restore jobs - no muss, no fuss, no issues with too much complexity to make it work.
  • It's incredibly reliable - I've NEVER had a Veeam backup that said it failed to properly restore.

Cons

  • I'd like to see nice looking backup status emails after each job.
  • Cloud-based storage could be a little cheaper and easier to implement.
  • At the moment we run two backup systems, but once we finish phasing out the first, we'll see a net positive impact on our budget from moving to Veeam's offsite storage model and annual support.
  • We run Veeam on our hardware, so no server support/replacement costs from vendors, just the annual support contract from Veeam.
We've definitely seen the benefit of being able to back up to lower-cost systems as we've connected our Veeam platform to a Synology Rackstation that is loaded with cheap high-storage drives as our backup location. Lots of storage for very little cost, with no compatibility issues. On the cloud side though, we're currently working through that and can't address it at the moment.
Unfortunately, this is an area I can't really address as we primarily use Veeam for backup and restores directly back to the source system.
Veeam has a much better interface for virtual environments than Datto - Veeam connects directly to vCenter or the ESXi hosts, while Datto only connects to the hosts. With the vCenter connectivity, backups follow VMs regardless of the host they sit on and you continue to get good backups even after load balancing and migrations. Datto, on the other hand, loses connections to VMs if they're migrated to another server. It also means you have to set up multiple schedules within the Datto interface to account for each of your hosts, while Veeam only needs one (if you want to keep it simple) because it's not looking at the host, but rather the overall management console for VM listings.
Datto, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly Dynamics NAV)
Veeam is fantastic for organizations of all sizes, though once you start to get into the hundreds or thousands of VMs, backup jobs would probably need to be split up into multiple grounds just to make sure they complete. The software tends to run down a list instead of doing everything simultaneously, though you can tell it to start a few jobs at a time instead of just one. It won't run 100 at a time though, so you've got a bit of a bottleneck in larger environments for backup.

Veeam Data Platform Feature Ratings

Data Center Backup
8.7
Universal recovery
6
Instant recovery
10
Recovery verification
10
Business application protection
10
Multiple backup destinations
10
Incremental backup identification
10
Backup to the cloud
5
Deduplication and file compression
10
Snapshots
10
Platform support
3
Retention options
10
Encryption
10

Using Veeam Backup & Replication

4 - It's primarily the IT Department and CIO in my org that utilize it as it's an IT system and functions primarily for backup of our virtual environment. There is an option to back up physical machines, but it's very limited in allowing you to set schedules or pick specific things to back up, so we don't utilize it at this time.
2 - We've got two that are familiar with it, one primary use and one secondary user. It's a pretty simple program and just runs once you have it set up, so the primary responsibility of the primary person is just to check in and make sure backups completed/resolve any issues. The secondary person is just there so the primary can go on vacation without getting called.
  • Backing up up a virtual environment is absolutely number 1, and that's what this product excels at.
  • System testing - snapshots are great, but we sometimes run an ad-hoc backup of sensitive machines prior to major updates just as a secondary preventative measure. VEEAM makes this really easy, so there's no reason not to take advantage of it.
  • Off-site storage - VEEAM has decent pricing for offsite backups that are integrated into it, but we've found that how it stores backups and the ability to define the backup location makes it really easy to just point one backup system at the repository for VEEAM and pay one fee to back up that one platform, rather than an individual fee for every machine backed up. The end result is the same.

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