Veeam Backup & Replication Reviews

The solution is based on the IAF solutions that are specific for moving the data centers that we have to the cloud. This is the main tension for us right now. We are investing in some past solutions, however, we're not using them yet. There are some tests, some small tests, however, we are moving IAF solutions in order to move our data centers.

We like Veeam as it is the kind of backup that has basic snapshots. It's very useful for us as we have a lot of virtual servers. This is the most impressive thing that we see. 

There are some special features from Veeam. They have the replication and the kind of backup that we can use. We have a very strong solution in the network. Due to the fact that we have several internal DMS's, we needed to make a special design. Veeam adapted to that. That's why we choose it. With all the solutions, it was not possible to use the actual network structure that we had. Veeam made it possible.

The solution is stable and the performance is good.

The product can scale. 

For us, it's important that the products can be adapted to different network scenarios. This is the biggest problem. The issues that we had when we selected the products were due to the specifics on the network from a security point of view. Security for us is the most important feature that we need to work with. THey need to ensure that it's possible to secure the network.

The initial setup is complex. 

We use several proxies, reverse proxies, due to our needs. It's not so common. There's not too much information and it's not so useful. They could develop it more and they could market it better. Not many users have this scenario. The reverse proxy, for us, was an important piece to implement. If a user has a good view of the reverse proxying during the implementation, it's better.

The solution has been implemented in the company for about one year at this point. 

The solution is very stable. We needed to buy the biggest server to accommodate it. The requirements were very high. That's why we started late when they decided to use it. However, after we followed the recommendations and followed the certification of equipment servers and storage that we needed, it's okay. Now we find it's very stable.

The scalability is very good. Everybody uses it. In general, we have about 125,000 people using it.

We likely will increase usage in the future. 

We needed some technical support at the start. It was good. Here in Brazil, they are from Brazil and they have helped us too in the design phase. That said, the product is very good. We don't need exactly support for any issue that we found. We've only needed some help for the implementation, the start of the design.

In terms of the implementation, it's still being rolled out. It's very big and there is a very sparse structure that we have. It's global. It will take about two years for it to be completely implemented, due to the places and locations we need to implement it. We need to make and design for each place as it is not standard. That's why it takes a long time. We prefer to take it in parts to be careful with the implementation, in order to see if it's really what we want. Therefore, for us, the setup is quite complex.

The results have been good so far. People are liking it very much. That said, we still have some designs to do for other places that we have implemented.

Due to the implementation, we are doing, there are about 50 people working on the deployment. This is just an estimation. It's quite a large project.

We pay the licensing fees on a yearly basis. There may be a few additional costs, however, I cannot speak to those exactly. Our technical team might have a better idea of what is involved in terms of licensing arrangements. 

We tried the base license, however, it's my understanding that it wasn't enough and we needed a bit more. 

We are a Veeam partner.

In terms of types of deployments used, at this time it's been working more on-premises, however, we have intentions to use the cloud. We are moving several loads to the cloud. 

I would advise new users that the design is the most important piece. There are several options in the ways that you can implement it. My recommendation is to look at the strategy. Networking becomes very important. Having a good design at the outset makes things easier. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

Our primary use cases for Veeam Backup & Replication are backing up to the cloud, backing up to a couple of deduplication appliances, and backing up to local disk - compressed to disk.

Veeam Backup & Replication is far more dynamic as far as being able to generate backup jobs. We used to use a product called NetWorker, and at the time the version of NetWorker we had would not back up to the cloud. I think it does now, but we're not using it anymore. But at the time, NetWorker was fairly new and it was just a tape backing up the disc. So Veeam is far better dealing with virtual environments and the cloud as targets. The capability with Veeam is just there.

Veeam Backup & Replication works. It integrates very well with VMware, but not so well with Nutanix, but that's common, I understand. I have both VMware and Nutanix virtual environments and I'm backing up through the same Veeam services. I have proxies running on both environments. Like I said, integration with VMware is excellent with very granular recovery while with the Nutanix environment it is not as intuitive, not as readily available.

In terms of what could be improved, when creating a backup job with Veeam, you can create a daily backup, but it doesn't do it within that job. It does not give you the ability to also set the terms for monthly and/or weekly backups. It has to be a separate job. It gets clunky to manage the timeframes where you don't want a daily to run on this day and creating weeklies. And you don't want a daily to run on this day doing monthlies. That is hard to deal with. It would be really nice if you could do it through a single command line or a single interface.

It is called a father son, or grandfather, type backup structure. The retention periods are not consistent or not available for different retention periods within that job. Retention periods being daily, weekly, monthly.

As for what I would like to see in future releases, just the integration to other virtual environments. In our case, the Nutanix environment is incomplete with the enterprise manager recovery tools part of it. That's where it is incomplete on the Nutanix side as well on the ESX. On the VMware side, the ability to set your retention policy within a job over multiple periods would be really nice if that was doable.

I have been using Veeam Backup & Replication for well over a year, probably 18 months, maybe even close to two years.

The product relies fairly greatly on the implementations of the storage vendors. For example, we were using large storage in AWS and it was using Microsoft. It's the format - ReFS, the recovery, the storage, the dis format, the volume formatting. We had a serious failure and lost six 30 terabyte ReFS volumes in AWS and lost nine 15 terabyte ReFS volumes on our local storage. I was able to recover the local storage in a little over two months. To recover the AWS storage of our volumes we calculated would have taken between six months to a year and probably cost us several tens of thousands of dollars.

So our volumes are still sitting in recoverable AWS in the case where if we actually have to recover something it's doable at significant cost. But we don't use ReFS storage anymore.

I'm not big. We have 200 employees and maybe 50 or 60 or 70 VM's, something like that. We have a data domain appliance that we rent space on that is offsite. We have an extra grade appliance and I have a bunch of CADA disks on a net app for just local storage. If that's scalable, I don't know. My understanding is that I can create more, but everything is local. So I don't have to have remote backup servers. But I understand that with my license I can create remote backup servers, as well.

That sounds like it's pretty straightforward. You link it and you can move backups from one site to another and then recover them off that other site. From what I've read, it sounds amazing, but from what I've done, I've never had to go into any great remote control, remote access or remote sites. So I don't know as far as the scalability goes. It sounds like it can scale up the ying yang. The one thing that I'm aware of though, is that when you're doing the backup, when you're scaling, you wind up with tears, because you have one server backing up a set of VM's, or an environment. And you have another server backing up another environment or another set of VM's.

If you lose one backup server it is able to catalog those backups from another server. I know you can catalog those backups to another server to recover. So it's dynamic. I've had to do that. I've had to build a new server and then recover the catalogs and recover data. It is powerful, it is capable. I like it.

In terms of direct users, it is me and three others that have gotten their fingers into it a little bit by the documentation that I've written on how to do something step by step. But there is really only me managing the system.

We are using this product extensively now. 

From the time that we installed it until now, we had to switch from CPU licenses to what they call UL, Universal Licensing. Because CPU licensing was only available on a VMware infrastructure and when we entered do our Nutanix infrastructure, we had to change the licensing model. There was a small cost to doing that because of the way it's licensed. We have not had to increase our license count yet. I will be shortly implementing another version of the Veeam. I think it's a very simple license, it's the five user license. It's in the VLU, but it's not the enterprise version of it, for our computer science department. They will be managing their backups with Veeam and a technician who I will be training.

That ReFS issue was one of the things that I had with technical support. For the most part they have been very responsive. They have been helpful when it's actually a Veeam issue. With the ReFS thing, they couldn't do anything about that and they referred me to Microsoft, which was a fricking waste of time. I'm so ticked with Microsoft.

We used to use NetWorker for 10 or 12 years.

We made the switch because of the virtualization and cloud access as well as disc storage on the version of NetWorker that we were running. NetWorker requires a physical appliance and the upgrades to NetWorker were cumbersome. The next generation of NetWorker, if we had stayed, would have required a rebuild of our hardware, which we've done once and was a pain in the backside. At that point, I don't think we could have run NetWorker because it wants to go to talk directly to devices and manage devices at a hardware level. So you can't virtualize the connections. So our NetWorker product had to reside on a physical machine.

I don't know if that has changed since we haven't used NetWorker for probably three - four years. We haven't done any upgrades in four years. So the move to Veeam or Commvault, which was the two that we were looking at, was primarily because we had local vendor support for both products. The move to Veeam was well priced, Commvault was out to lunch as far as dollars and cents. We are a fairly small shop and the pricing was just outrageous for Commvault 300 virtual machines. 

Veeam natively lives in a virtual environment. NetWorker couldn't. We also used to use a Norton product. I have forgotten the name of it - it starts with an S.

Those were retired when we started using Veeam. It has been four years since any of those were active, but those were for our remote sites. They only backed up the tape. We didn't explore Backup Exec in a virtual situation. Just didn't even look at it. I don't know if that was a mistake. I don't think so. Like I said Veeam, works really well. I am very pleased.

The documentation to set it up was great. I think we were up and running in about 30 minutes. That was to set up the backup server. Then there is building other services - the proxies, the repository manager, the enterprise manager for managing backups and recoveries. But to set up the backup server itself was super easy.

We just did it in house.

My advice to anyone considering Veeam Backup & Replication, is, like anything, to build a test site - do it on a test environment. Don't mess with your live system right off the bat, play with it, get familiar with it. It took me about about four, five or six weeks before I felt reasonably comfortable and built up in our production environment and the various servers. I started backing up and playing with a couple of Veeams that were smaller, and not backed up to the NetWorker, but I was backing them up and looking at how I could do recoveries. Eventually, I could do a full Veeam recovery and I could move it to another site and recover it, and all that sort of thing. I watched over time how retention worked. During that time I was asking questions of the Veeam technical support, too. They were very responsive.

So do it in a test environment if you don't have any training. I read online documents and went through a free Veeam school online, a bunch of documents, and there were a couple of YouTube type tutorials. I did a lot of that sort of thing as well. But it was all done ad hoc from work, I didn't go and do any formal train. So build the test environment and play.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Veeam Backup & Replication an eight. It's got room for improvement.

The main use case is performing a backup of a virtualized environment.

The most valuable feature is adaptability, where it automatically adapts to the environment that it's being installed on. It can auto-configure backup transport, whether it be a direct-attach or network-based.

It has one-click restores and instant recovery, which is important because if a product doesn't have a good restore and recovery capability, then the backup is pretty much useless.

They need full cloud integration such that an on-premises backup can be offloaded to the cloud for storage. It is my understanding that they are focusing on solidifying that now. Everybody wants to be able to integrate with the cloud.

I have been using the Veeam Backup & Replication solution for 12 years.

Around the first quarter of this year, they rolled out release 10. The last stable version was 9.5 Update 4, and since the release of version 10, they just rolled out the first update, which is 10 Alpha.

Version 10a has a lot of fixes. For the most part, it's a very fluent software, and very stable. However, some of the new features, when they're trying to roll them out, they seem to have to do the updates just to stabilize those.

Over the years they've had some minor bugs, but nothing that stands out in the crowd compared to anything else because everybody else has the same issues.

This is a scalable product.

I've been very, very pleased with the Veeam software tech support. When you call in, you actually get a live person and they are typically able to assist you or direct you to second-tier support if it's above their typical area of expertise.

The complexity of the initial setup depends on the environment and whether it is an all-in-one or distributed. For an all-in-one situation, it can be very straightforward. You just install it and press next, next, next. You will get everything you need and a fully functional product.

In a distributed setup, you have a couple of components that are external to the server that you're loading the main software on. This is a database server and reporting server, as well as an enterprise managing component. With these additional components, you have just a little bit more configuration. They're not that complex and I've actually done some other backups in the past that were more complex.

Overall, it is pretty straightforward.

In the company that I work for, we have a managed services group. So, our backup and engineering team for managing other environments are also are skilled at doing Veeam.

We have a lot of customers that use Veeam, and I'm the installer implementer. I implement these solutions and do upgrades to them. There are a couple of us who are field engineers, and either of us can maintain and deploy updates.

My understanding is that it is a fairly small price point. They have two different models, where one is based on the sockets that you're protecting, and the other is based on instances, or servers. You can choose whichever model works best for you.

I think that this is a good product across any environment. I've installed it for schools, in the financial industry, for lawyers, and places that vary in size from small to large. I've never had any issues and I recommend it.

I know that there are always new features being released but at this point, there is nothing to say that I need anything more. That said, there is always room for improvement.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Primary backup and long-term retention to protect our client data across our datacenters. Allows for incremental RPOs for VM and file-level recovery across multiple datacenters to our IT staff of more than 200 technicians. Enable fast restores and long term archival.

As our datacenters continue to grow, we had a challenge of reducing backup windows while being able to scale our total protected VMs. Before Veeam, we had backup infrastructure sprawl. Veeam was able to reduce our overall backup windows while reducing our dedicated backup infrastructure.

Granular permissions through Veeam Enterprise Manager have allowed for us to pass control down to our support staff instead of having it with senior datacenter resources.

Vendor integration for many of the enterprise features have allowed for us to have greater performance from our storage vendors further improving on our commitments to protect our clients' data. 

Multithreading of health check process: This can take too much time to process on large jobs and/or large VMs. Better to have built-in deduplication for long-term retention. Storage efficiency is a weakness.

Additional executive summary reports for the entire infrastructure would be a nice to have.

Three to five years.

No, we have not experienced any stability issues.

One challenge that we have encountered was on the long-term retention of data. Be sure to look into a dedicated deduplication appliance. 

Also, know where the bottleneck is within your environment. If you are repurposing older equipment, it likely won't be up to the task. Storage performance is crucial to your backup times.

Support has been great; no complaints.

We used PHD Virtual and what is now Unitrends UVB. Backup infrastructure was becoming a significant cost and scaling this solution meant more sprawl. Backup windows were increasing outside our comfort levels. At the time, we as acquired a company with additional datacenter services. Consolidating to one solution with a single interface was key. This, in turn, ensured that we had complete visibility of our backup environments across multiple datacenters.

Veeam helped us solve all of these areas of concern.

It was pretty straightforward.

In-house.

We have increased our scalability while being able to free up senior resources from recovery activities. I estimate our overall savings to about $20,000 per year.

Plan your long-term backup strategy for growth and size the solution appropriately. Veeam has a number of setup options to choose from so make sure you understand them to make the right decision.

I would always suggest a multi-year agreement as this will allow for the best possible ROI of licensing.

We looked at vRanger, Unitrends, and Datto.

Since everyone's data is different, I would recommend a proof of concept project to understand how your data will be used within this solution. If you are intending to keep data for long-term retention, look at a dedicated deduplication appliance.

It is very easy to recover from crashes or create testing environments.

By using the “Instant VM Recovery”, we test new patches or features on a VM, which is the same as our production environment.

Our VMware License is the Enterprise Plus with Operations Management. For this reason, we only rely on Veeam for backups and a few tests.

Most of our activities are done using VMware itself.

Veeam has more features than we actually use, for example, the virtual labs.

They could integrate Veeam with the storage centers, in order not to use the Veeam Backup Repository Servers anymore.

I have used the solution for three years.

Our organization has always used the latest stable version of the Enterprise Edition.

No.

No. If we need to scale, we just create more proxy VMs to help with the extra load.

We rarely use Veeam's tech support. When we needed it, they were very helpful.

We had other backup solutions, but Veeam has proved to be better than VMware.

The initial setup was made by a consultant from Veeam. It took less than one week to have everything configured and ready for production.

The price for Veeam is better than other backup solutions that we have found out there.

Yes. We also use Bacula, but Veeam proved to be faster and more reliable.

First of all, find out what your backup needs are. After that, try an evaluation (or free) version.

I'm the system admin, and I'm taking care of backups and every job in Veeam Backup. We have the AIX machines and we are deploying the AIX machine; we are doing the backup and trying to restrain the AIX on them.

It's very customer-friendly and user-friendly and we use it mostly to backup an issue. 

We have done a multiple-time restore on Veeam Backup and that is an awesome feature. It's a very critical system, we have to restore it and Veeam makes it easy to do so to protect our system.

Initially setting up the product is easy.

The solution has been quite stable. 

Technical support is good.

It supports the technology and it's actually more secure and has enhanced itself. Veeam is always making itself better in terms of functionality and features.

Part of the issue we've had is with the AIX backup. Currently, Veeam has issued version 2.0 for the AIX machine, however, it is not capable of taking the entire machine backup and restoring at the one side. It is only taking the backup of the partitions only. There is a limitation there right now. I'd suggest they improve the functionality in the Veeam Backup agent so that it will take an entire machine backup. That would be more beneficial for the official system for the AIX's.

The stability for AIX machines could be better.

Veeam Backup also needs to be possible in Azure, so that if something goes down Veeam can take care of everything. Our local vendor in India for the Azure environment has found out there is no availability for Azure for Veeam Backup and Replication. If there is an existing Veeam option that supports the Azure environment, they need to relay the message. It's not clear now and it appears there isn't one.

We'd love to see the solution offer more compression in the future to allow us to save more space. 

It's stable for the ESXi and other Linux and workstations they've established. In the case of the AIX machine that we are using, the stability needs to be improved.

The solution is totally scalable. That said, one thing I didn't get from local resources is that Veeam Backup cannot perform in the Azure environment. 

Technical support is good. It's awesome. Still, we can't get the right solution at the right time. If I'm asking about what ports need to be open for the Veeam Backup and Replication and they are just suggesting the link and just showing the port, it's not quite as helpful as we would hope. For example, what can do we to improve from this side? There needs to be more specificity in terms of the level of technical support we get when we have specific concerns. We would be grateful for this.

The setup process was really easy. I've done it so many times, actually and I am quite comfortable with the steps now. However, in the case of AIX, most users don't know about the AIX deployment. They are not seeing exactly what needs to be done. That part needs to be taken care of by Veeam directly.

I can't speak to the exact pricing, however, in our region, in South Asia, pricing is always a concern.

We tried Commvault also, however, it's not user-friendly and it's not as easy compared to Veeam. They have their own benefit, however, they simply are not user-friendly enough for us. Veeam is easier, and it's reassuring. We've saved money with Veeam as we've had to restore a few times now and we've saved so much data using it. That's why it's good. It's proven itself again and again.

We are customers and end-users of Veeam.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

I primarily use Veeam Backup for VMware backups—I have one physical agent—and replications to SAN. I use it to copy backups to the cloud, as well as for tape backups. I also use it for restoring Azure backups and replicas to ensure that backup is successful. 

This solution is deployed on-premises, and we are currently using the latest update. 

One of the most valuable features is the integration. Another good feature is the instant recovery. 

I think that Veeam could improve some performance issues when the backup itself is restored. I'm also using HPE StoreOnce, which has deduplication, and when I'm trying to test or run backups, it takes a lot of time. I think they could improve the testing for backup copies. 

I have been using Veeam Backup for more than five years. 

This solution is very stable and reliable. I didn't face any issues with Veeam Backup Replication itself—the whole issue was related to issues with the operating system. 

This solution is easy to scale. 

I have contacted Veeam technical support a few times and was satisfied with the support. I contacted them regarding issues related to the backup copy to cloud and they helped to fix the problem. 

The installation was straightforward and we handled it locally. 

We have one admin using this application and two IT members working as alternative administrators for any issues if the main admin is not available. So we have a team of three handling maintenance. 

We implemented this solution through an in-house team. 

The pricing is on the higher side, so I think they have to think about the price. It's a stable product and there was no requirement to keep in touch with the support team, so the renewal license was too expensive. 

I rate this solution a ten out of ten, and I would definitely recommend this solution to others. 

My primary use case is for VM backups. We have more than 500 VMs to backup completely every day, which is quite a big backup, and we run it incrementally. This solution is deployed on-premises. 

The most valuable feature is how reliable Veeam Backup is. It has the normal expected features that allow you to ensure that everything is backed up completely. 

Veeam Backup is not enhanced. There aren't any enhancements yet and they are still using traditional methods for snapshots and to perform the backup, like many other vendors. I've noticed this has an impact on the performance. We run hundreds or thousands of VM backups in the same night. Most software don't have a SMAC algorithm to schedule the backup and improve performance for the production environment. They just randomly create. In order to perform big backups at one time, we have to invest in storage. 

Another improvement would be simplifying and integrating their software. I have one app for VM backups, another for file backups, and another for implications, so I have to implement three platforms in one organization. This is quite difficult. The implementation process could be simplified, in regard to VM files and replication. 

I have been using this solution for more than four years. 

This is a stable product. It rarely requires maintenance and I rarely deal with backup files that are gone or cannot be restored because of software bugs. 

This solution is easy to scale. 

The response time is quite slow and I have complained many times. But their technical skill is quite good. For most customers, the technical support should depend on the SLA that they have, but support doesn't always respect that. Sometimes they respond to us within the SLA, but after we reply, we have to wait around one day for another email. 

We implemented through an in-house team. There are two administrators for maintenance. 

Overall, I'm not happy with the pricing. The price could be improved. Every year, most vendors try to increase the price. It says it's being upgraded, but there's no improvement. The product stays the same, but the licensing costs are increasing. 

I have also used Zerto for POC. I found that Veeam is good for backups, but it has a limitation. It's good for VM backups, but can be quite challenging for file backups and replication. Zerto is different, in that it's good for replication and it's simpler to use. The license is quite expensive though. 

If you are looking into implementing this solution, I advise you to make a POC, understand your requirements, and make sure the solution you choose can provide what you want. 

I rate Veeam Backup an eight out of ten.