Veeam FTW - Inexpensive and built to stay that way
October 13, 2023
Veeam FTW - Inexpensive and built to stay that way
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Veeam Backup & Replication
Overall Satisfaction with Veeam Data Platform
We use Veeam's Backup and Recivery as well as their Orchestrator product and that allows us to do things we did not think were possible in an application that is mainly a backup solution. We can plan and execute full backups and restores of our large environment to local, near-line and cloud without a complex web of other applications. In my experience, Veeam has taken a simple concept and created a simple solution at a reasonable price point. This platform has saved us from self-induced mayhem as well as large scale catastrophes multiple times. We believe it is one of the better solutions out there and simple to work with to boot.
- Virtualized workloads
- Endpoints and physical servers running Windows & Linux
- NAS filers
- In addition to back up, we also replicate some of these workloads
- Enterprise applications such as Oracle or SAP HANA
- Application-centric recovery using Veeam Explorers (for Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint, etc)
- Capacity Tier to store data within object storage for longer term retention
- Utilizing backup copies for secondary purposes via DataLabs
- Automating test restores to validate recoverability
- Immutable storage to protect against ransomware
- “Instant” recovery or portability between platforms (physical > virtual > cloud-hosted)
- Immutable storage to protect against ransomware
- Simplicity. It is easy to configure, deploy, and manage large scale deployments
- It is a time-saver. By automating some of the restore testing we can verify that backups will work without having to do full restores.
- Reporting is great and allows us to produce documents that satisfy management and auditors alike.
- Veeam One is a great product that can replace other mature monitoring applications and Veeam doesn't seem to promote it as much as they should.
- DR restores from cloud back to on-prem are not as automated as we would like them to be. It is cumbersome to have to bring back VMs from cloud manually.
- Progress bars and time estimators are not accurate. Many times we have processes that sit at 100% for a long time before they actually complete.
Do you think Veeam Data Platform delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Veeam Data Platform's feature set?
Yes
Did Veeam Data Platform live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Veeam Data Platform go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Veeam Data Platform again?
Yes
We have about 500 VMs that are backed up by Veeam. We also have some that are more filer based and make for a somewhat complex licensing scenario since filers are licensed by capacity instead of per server.We really enjoy the ability to test restores in Secure Labs so we don't have to actually restore workloads in our cloud environment, but rather simulate the cloud. This allows us to save on costs.So far, Veeam has met or exceeded expectations.
- While we have one Veeam administrator, its ability to delegate to other admins as well as allowing end users to recover their own content is also a reason we enjoy the product.
- Veeam has saved us many man-hours when it comes to testing and validation.
- For the cost, Veeam has allowed us to capture and capitalize on making DR a solution that is bundled with our backup product.
In the before times, we had a traditional backup application, with its own storage. It was more of a legagy application that had its own programming, required a full-time engineer dedicated to that application and it did not pivot well when conditions changed. Now, with Veeam, we can use dissimilar storage or any storage we have and take advantage of backups anywhere. We can write to local, near-line on-prem, or cloud and it looks and feels the same. There is no super-secret handshake required to make a backup work, no copying this small .conf file everywhere in order to ensure that the backup application can deal with the backup. Life is simpler now.
Yes, we have been able to reduce our datacenter footprint by leveraging cloud as our second datacenter. We have tested and verified that we can replicate into the cloud and should a DR event occur, we can start bringing our entire environment online within 15 minutes. We can restore within hours and we have reduced the complexity that VMware replication required. We have saved a lot of capital by leveraging Veeam in the cloud and keeping all that dark until needed.
We have a series of filers that act as our file servers. We have been able to use Veeam to back those us and also have been able to use them as destinations for our backups of other workloads. The versatility of the these filers as well as the versatility of Veeam have allowed us to do whatever we want with the storage we have. It is very empowering.