Veeam Data Platform- It works for us!

We utilise the Veeam Data Platform to provide Backup and Restore capability across our Virtual Machine fleet for image based backup. Our environment is primarily utilising FC-Backed Storage environment with multiple vCenters. We also utilise their application aware backup for Active Directory, SQL Server and the RMAN plug-in for Oracle backups. It also delivers an offsite backup solution backed by Cloud storage.

We utilise Veeam across multiple environments supporting around 3000 Virtual Machines. Veeam was introduced into our environment as a stop gap as we built a newer VMWare environment, but it quickly grew popular with the team as a replacement to our aging Tivoli Tape based backup solution. It usage just grew naturally from there as we found it didn't require the same level of specialist knowledge to keep it running and was lighter from an OS point of view and easier to manage backup policy changes through VM tags.

The trigger for us was to move off a growing expense in tivoli storage manager through contracted Specialist Staff cost and licensing of the Tivoli products. With Tivoli we weren't seeing a significant update of the product space to capture change in the industry, it was still an agent based backup with the OS pushing to 'tape' constructs. We'd got to the point we had dedicated AIX platforms to handle the amount/load of the backup. Moving to Veeam whilst still an arduous process greatly simplified our environment, removing AIX systems we didn't have the skills to continue to support and replacing with commodity equipment in line with our environment. From there we've seen the products capability grow to support many platforms and products and move with the industry.

As a customer we're not utilising Veeam to protect cloud workloads, but we do utilise the Cloud for off site storage and are in the process of building our own DR capability with Veeam to restore directly into a cloud platform. We hope this will bring us a cost effective DR capability that in the event of a disaster would allow us to restore our environment quickly.
In terms of our usage of Cloud Storage, Veeam allows us to natively connect into cloud vendor provided storage over our 'direct connections'. It hasn't helped our cloud bills, but it gives us a level of protection we could afford to build on-premise in a less complex manner.