Veeam Data Platform Reviews

The functionality available with Veeam enterprise licenses, allow a VMware vSphere snapshot to be integrated and transferred to HP 3PAR storage snapshots; this effectively off-loads all backup traffic to the storage network. The Original VMware snapshot is then released (this process takes less then a minute), and Veeam continues the backup operation directly form the 3PAR storage. This operation ensures minimal impact on the VM, VM network and Host hypervisor, while ensuring backups are performed at storage network speeds (8Gb fibre).

Reverse incremental backups with block level changes - Following the initial seed backup, only block level changes are captured in the following daily backups. This ensures backup times are kept to a minimum and reduces the amount of data that is replicated to additional disk off-site.

50x WAN optimisation - With the enterprise licence option you get WAN optimisation. this reduces the amount of bandwidth required to replicate VMs or backup copies off-site. I use this to transfer all VM backups to a co-location storage device at a dedicated DR site.

Instant recovery - this allows a Veeam protected VM to be instantly booted direct from the backup image. Veeam creates an NFS Datastore and presents this to the selected Esxi host. This can be used to test backups are being taken correctly, to recover a live VM or as a low cost DR solution. Once a VM is booted, this can be migrated live using vMotion back to production storage.

By using Veeam, backups times for the entire virtual environment have been reduced, and backup windows now have no impact on production VMs.

Instant recovery has revolutionised client DR plans, reducing recovery time objectives (RTO) and improving available recovery point objectives (RPO).

Also as Veeam "just works" less time is spent troubleshooting backup technologies and failed backups.

The amount of disk space required for the long term storage of backups (archiving Weekly / Monthly / yearly backups) can be higher then expected if you have a large daily change rate in your VM. This needs to be planned for when considereing long term arciving of backup files.

I have been working with Veeam for 18 months since the initial pilot.

If using off-site replication with WAN optimization, the initial Seed backups of VMs need to be taken locally and then transferred to off-site. Attempting to transfer these over the WAN can cause bandwidth saturation.

No issues.

No issues, additional physical or backup servers can be added using existing hardware or VMs to distribute the backup load as the envirnmnet grows.

Very good support from account manager and on-line portal.

Very good support, however as Veeam is simple to deploy only limited technical support was required during deployment.

Backups of VMs were previously taken using i365 data vault this added additional load to ESXi hosts and VMs during backup windows, switching to Veeam removed this load and enhanced recovery options for all VMs; i365 also provides block level incremental forever backups and replicates to our DR site, we continue to use this for the remaining physical machines.

The main feature we're currently using is the replication function that allows us to provide high availability in all of our company's retail sites throughout Europe & Asia. Backup is also a good tool, but we mainly use it in our HQ.

First of all, it has provided us with much needed HA for our retail sites. Until Veeam, the servers from stores were backed up, and in case of disaster with the production hypervisor, we would have faced a far too long restore time that would seriously impact the business.

Second, it allowed us to replace the older, slower, and much pricier backup solution in our virtual environment.

It still doesn't feel like a fully mature solution because it's not exactly ready for very large scale and complex environments with more than 1000 VMs.

Personally I've been using it for almost a year-and-a-half, but I'm part of a team that started implementing it in our infrastructure three years ago. Currently, the product is providing availability to almost 80% of our company's Windows & Linux virtual infrastructure and we're looking forward to the day when it will be doing this 100%. I've been using it since v6. Currently, our environment is fully updated to v8 with the latest patches, and we're looking forward to trying out v9 when it's released and confirmed by the community as a stable version.

The only issues we encountered until v8 was the fact that we couldn't automate the patching and upgrading of our environment. Starting with v8, Veeam optimized their silent install procedure, and now we're working on automating the whole process of keeping the product up to date with major releases and patches.

Besides this we've only experienced minor setbacks, such as proxy servers not being able to upgrade or uninstall properly due to the older local installer/uninstaller kits being overwritten in time by constant updates.

Anyone who's used Veeam in large or very large environments knows you can get a lot of errors from it. In time, you learn how to mitigate most of them fast or even optimize the environment to not get some of them at all.

Some design flaws, such as the fact that it automatically deletes replica's if it finds that the VM's disk sizes have been changed, can be pretty frustrating sometimes

But overall, I think "It just works!"

The main issue we're still facing with scalability is the fact that the EM (Enterprise Manager) is not designed to handle a very big number of Backup & Replication servers (some of which having hundreds of jobs). As so, we've been recently forced to deploy an EM in each of our HQ locations so that the Veeam infrastructure in the country is managed by it and not by a single unique EM server like we had until now. Automatic upgrades and patches were also an issues, but, as stated above, we seem to have found a solution thanks to the guys from Veeam.

Opening an incident to them is quite easy and fast, and their initial response times are pretty decent.

Previously, we used IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. Besides costing a lot more, it was also outdated, having very high upgrade costs. Also, it was a lot more complex (especially for the needs of a virtual environment). Besides this, it didn't provide us with the much needed Replication function for VMs. Currently, Tivoli Storage Manager is still being used in some of physical environment but since a year ago, we've slowly started to replace it with another backup product.

It definitely doesn't get more straightforward than Veeam when it comes to setup (and operating it, too). GUI is user-friendly and well designed. Installation process is simple and very fast. The Backup & Replication architecture itself is easy to understand and implement.

The entire implementation was done in-house by the team of which I'm a part.

For what it's capable of providing, I think pricing for this product is pretty decent both in functional and support licensing. Regarding licensing, all I can advise is that you either get the Standard version or the Enterprise Plus for the advanced features. There aren't that many reasons to get the Enterprise version.

For what it's designed to do, providing high availability and backup for virtual environments, it's definitely a jewel. I still think there's room for improvement on things like stability & scalability; it doesn't quite feel like a fully mature product yet that's capable of being implemented on very big and complex enterprise environments. And of course, I don't even want to think about the ripples it will send if they decide to implement support for physical environments in the same product.

Before contacting the support team, remember that the Veeam Community forum is a small treasure chest, spend a little time getting to know it, and it will get you out of the majority of issues or setbacks you encounter.

• The ability to perform de-duplication is the most valuable feature for me.
• It also performs SQL backups so that I can restore SQL database table bases. 
• Replication time very good. For example, I can replicate 4TB data to the DR side in 5 hours with a 10 Mbps data line everyday.
• Replica server tests on the DR side are very easy because I just need to power on the server on from there.

After we started using Veeam, we transferred all our 30 virtual servers in seven hours to our disaster recovery side. 

Also, during our disaster recovery test w,e did not have any issues replicating servers.

It should support physical servers, and as far as I know, v9 will do this.

We had no issues deploying it.

It's been very stable.

We can scale as needed.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, but I haven't heard that it wasn't anything by straightforward.

I would advise you to get it because some of the features are free.

• Support for VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols) that allows direct backup from snapshots of storage systems that support VVols and VMware Virtual SAN 2.0
• Granular recovery of objects from MS SQL, Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange
• Backup and replication of Fault Tolerant (FT) VMs
• Cross-vCenter vMotion awareness
• Hot-Add transport mode of SATA virtual disks
• Support for Veeam Cloud Connect that allows customers to backup their offsite backups into the cloud 

This product has really reduced our recovery time objective considerably because we are able to restore entire virtual machines in under 15 minutes whenever that has come up. 

Not just that, though, as we are also able to restore individual objects requested by customers, e.g. deleted messages from an Exchange server. The Veeam product has reduced the time it takes to configure and monitor backups.

Although this product is technically designed for virtual environments, it would be very useful if the same concepts or technology is applied to backup physical servers. 

That is what I would love to see Veeam implement or add as a feature to a future product. 

Veeam is a good product that is easy to deploy and manage and it just really works.

Virtual Machine replication between sites.

It has provided a higher level of reliability to core company systems and services.

Better reporting of replication job details in order to provide better insights when troubleshooting.

I've used Veeam Availability Suite for eight months.

No issues encountered.

Replication delta sizes have been inconsistent with Windows VMs, but we are working with Veeam Support to resolve the issue.

No issues encountered.

Very good, no particular issues.

Very good, with fast communication, follow ups from the support team and consistent. Still need to see how long it takes to fix our main issue in order to evaluate how timely the support calls are resolved.

No, it is our first implementation of a replication solution.

The initial setup was very straightforward, installation and set-up of VM replication took just two to three hours.

We implemented through a vendor team. They have been very responsive and cooperative, as well as very informed as to how the solution works and the best practices that are to be followed.

This product will provide availability of core services in case of a disaster scenario, which will enable our company to continue operating normally. It also provides another recovery point in our backup & recovery strategy. Estimated ROI on this project is calculated at 40% ±5 in case of such scenario.

The original setup cost included purchasing hardware on which to replicate the VMs, as well as the license and support fees for Veeam. On a day-to-day basis, the only additional overhead needed was an increase of our WAN bandwidth in order to accommodate the replication between sites. Overall, we managed to keep the costs at a very reasonable amount.

We had considered other solutions, Symantec and VMware, but eventually decided to go with Veeam due to their very good reputation on this segment.

I would highly recommend it, since the solution is very simple to implement, monitor and manage.

• With Veeam Cloud Connect and Azure Storage you can get your backups offsite.
• With it, you don't have the complexity of managing an offsite infrastructure.
• It may even help to reduce your DRC strategy costs.

For us, it's a simple solution for our complex environment. It has helped us reduce the time to manage backups.

Everyday technology needs updates, patches, replacements. The challenge for us is to have resources up to date so that our skills and technical knowledge are up-to-date. Such is the case with all products, so it is as well with Veeam Backup.

Regular backup/recovery is the main feature, but I really like the Exchange mailbox recovery tool, and the ability to isolate test environments.

It is really easy to use as well, and it's a powerful backup/recovery solution.

Fortunately, we have not had to use the restore functionality (touch wood), but it does give us the reassurance that we can perform a restore if needed, in a real situation as well as performing regular testing in our virtual lab. The other functionality that has really had an impact is being able to granually restore Exchange mailboxes.

I really cannot think of any areas that stand out as needing improvement right now, to be honest.

We've used Veeam for two years. We started with the free version of Veeam ONE, then we paid for Backup Essentials because we were so pleased with it.

Not at all, we found it to be extremely intuitive to install, really clearly letting us know of any issues across network at each stage so could easily remedy.

Not at all, we've had no issue with stability.

Absolutely no problems with scaling.

Really highly, we did have an issue with type of license purchased (we accidentally ordered Hyper-V version instead of the one we needed) and the customer service team who resolved it was top notch. We were issued with a temporary full license to cover the period that they took to sort it out so we could continue to use the software. Brilliant.

We have not really needed technical support as we have found it to be really easy and intuitive to install and use. The documentation, when needed, has also been very comprehensive.

This is the first product that we have used to back up VMware ESXi. VM servers so do not have anything to compare against. Having said that, we have no reason to look for an alternative.

It's really easy, if there are any issues with things like firewall/ports that should be open, the software tells you exactly what the problem is and what's needed to fix it. Very impressed with this.

It was all done by our in-house IT team.

The ROI is difficult to calculate but the product has returned our original investment many times, in terms of insuring systems uptime across our business.

The original set-up cost was only the license fee (£636+vat), plus minimal internal IT costs to set up.

We did try Unitrends backup solution but really preferred Veeam’s offering.

My advice would be to go ahead with the implementation as I think it's the best product on market today for VMware ESXi disaster recovery. It really is straightforward to install and use, with some really nice features.

• Ease of use
• Robustness
• Scalability

Saves IT operations a lot of time and frustration.

Also, the ROI for our CFO is tremendous whereas we did not have data deduplication on our previous backup product, unless licensed at a cost higher/GB than buying storage. We can now leverage in-box Windows deduplication with excellent results. We have longer retention times and spaces to spare on our backup targets.

For now we’re pretty happy, but we’d like the ability to schedule.

Also, the configuration and fine tuning of the Fibre Channel based off host proxy where we leverage the SAN hardware VSS provider took some work and effort.

I've used it for around 12 months.

None, we did an extensive POC to get to know the product which helped us roll it out smoothly.

Once due to a Windows update. Veeam fixed this extremely rapidly.

For now we have not. As long as you make sure to take care of any hardware bottle necks in the solution (source, target, network) we have been very happy with the results.

It's excellent.

Veeam’s technical support is very good, and their responsiveness in fixing issues like the one we had once after a Windows update sets an industry standard.

We did, but I cannot disclose names. We left them because they were too expensive, not focused on customer needs, and in regards to virtualization they dropped the ball big time.

It was straightforward initially, but see above re: configuration and fine-tuning.

We did all the work in-house.

The ROI lies in the fact that we spend a lot less time dealing with failed and problematic backups.

We spent time setting up a live POC to make sure Veeam B&R could deliver in our real world environment. After deciding to purchase it, we got it up and running with minimal effort. We’d done most of our testing & validation of the configuration in the POC.

We did, but I cannot disclose names.

Ask for a trial license, get hands on experience with the product, ask for help when you need it and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what it delivers.