Item: Veeam Data Platform
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We deploy Veeam on a server on-premises for our customers, to backup locally. Then, a second copy of those jobs is shipped off to our cloud connect server in our data center. This solution gives customers a local repository to quickly recover/spin-up VMs in addition to offsite protection for disaster recovery. As part of the MSP partner model with Veeam, we love that we can easily dial up/down our usage count of any product in the Veeam portfolio quickly and easily.

We also utilize the Veeam Availability portal to centrally view and administer to all our disparate client jobs/environments--makes it a breeze to quickly see storage utilization, job status, alerts, and warnings. In addition, the availability portal is much easier to leverage for license reporting now.

Pros and Cons

Easy backup/recovery administration console
CloudConnect to easily backup offsite or ship copies of backups offsite
MSP partner model and licensing is superb
Flexibility in running on-premise / in our own datacenter / subscribing to others cloud connect storage is a nice mix

Monthly license reporting for MSP partners
Managing cloud connect jobs still seems a little basic

Return on Investment

Our primary objective is a solid BDR solution - more important than overall profit of a product / service
We are able to easily make a reasonable profit without tremendous management overhead to manage BDR deployments
The ability to build storage pricing plans and easily report on customer usage in the Availability console is very nice

Number of Workloads Protected

We manage approximately 40 virtual workloads and a handful of physical and haven't tried to market exclusively around BDR solutions, so our growth has been stagnant. That's simply an internal restriction, we're not currently taking on new customers and some customers are pure cloud/SaaS with nothing applicable for Veeam.

Veeam Backup and Replication Backup to Cloud Platforms

We like that the month-to-month cost is predictable and very reasonable and appreciate the flexibility to target different cloud platforms (however we only target CC in our datacenter, so it's not applicable for the most part).

We have tried some restores to AWS for some one-off situations and did run into more problems than it was worth recovering some Linux VMs (mostly due to supported platforms or environments in AWS), and we haven't tried to recover Windows VMs to AWS nor to other cloud platforms.

Veeam Backup and Replication Copy Data Management

We consistently benefit from being able to prove the BDR solution is comprehensive and provide realistic RTO data to clients. Routinely as part of annual SOCII audits we have to gather evidence of the backup solution and parameters used and have never once been dinged on anything related to Veeam. Nor have the auditors mentioned or suggested that we should evaluate a different solution, while they often have no shortage of comments in other areas.

Alternatives Considered

ShadowProtect SPX, Quest Rapid Recovery (formerly AppAssure) and MSP360 Backup (formerly CloudBerry Backup)

Veeam is much more robust than ShadowProtect, while also fitting the budget requirements for some very small environments that previously used CloudBerry. We think this is pretty impressive to have both breadth and depth and maintain reasonable price points to keep on budget. There have been a few times we've thought about evaluating other solutions, but have such a solid expertise across the board with our team we also don't want to have to learn a new product in parallel and identify shortcomings.

Other Software Used

Hyper-V, Slack, Asana

Likelihood to Recommend

Ease of use in quickly deploying a robust backup and disaster recovery solution in the MSP world, where you likely control the client's backup server and control the CloudConnect destination for those jobs makes overall job management awesome. Almost all of our deployments are for Microsoft Hyper-V environments, where the hooks under the hood to Hyper-V are fantastic (for recovery, testing backup recovery, managing replication scenarios, etc.). We also run the backup agent (without the full B&R app) for some stand-alone physical servers--backing up directly to CloudConnect.

We'd say Veeam Backup & Replication is appropriate for any single-server small client, to multiple Hyper-V / SAN storage clients and anything in between. We don't have experience with the Office 365 backup components or much need for VMware yet, but for the average MSP partner, Veeam is a no-brainer and at a good price point.

MSP's perspective on Veeam Backup & Replication

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Veeam Backup & Replication