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

Overall Satisfaction with Veeam Data Platform

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We needed an easy backup & replication solution with solid reporting, that scales very well. I've been implementing Veeam for over 8 years now. At our company, we started at the branch office level, and then scaled up globally to our datacenters. We needed a standardized solution that was easy to onboard new sites, new servers, perform BC/DR testing, and cross-train employees on the technology. Coming from a fragmented set of backup solutions, this was an easy win to ensure we had a solid BC/DR plan in place for all of our infrastructure, at all sites.

Pros and Cons

Pros

DR orchestration
BC/DR testing
Great UI/UX
Reporting
P2V of workloads to VMware
Datacenter migrations between vCenter clusters/environments

Cons

Failure events should be more verbose in the summary reports.
SNMP documentation for monitoring via an NMS (SolarWinds/Nagios) should be more in-depth.

Key Insights

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

Return on Investment

Easy to sell - its a great insurance policy for the company.
Easy to demonstrate in a lab environment.
Has saved us from multiple BC/DR scenarios where quick restores were needed.
Allows us to rehearse our BC/DR strategies and playbooks regular.y

Other Software Used

Acronis Cyber Cloud for Enterprise (discontinued), Veritas Backup Exec, Synology Active Backup Suite, Acronis Advanced Backup, Unitrends

Likelihood to Recommend

Veeam Data Platform is a robust and reliable solution that offers comprehensive data management and protection services. Its user-friendly UI and powerful features make it easy to manage, backup, and restore data, ensuring data availability and business continuity. Veeam Data Platform supports a wide range of applications and platforms, providing flexibility and scalability to meet various business needs. Moreover, its advanced backup and recovery capabilities, including Azure/AWS integration and automation, make it an ideal choice for businesses looking to enhance their data protection strategies in a hybrid cloud. Additionally, Veeam has a strong reputation for excellent customer support and continuous innovation, ensuring that users have access to the latest technologies and features.

Using Veeam Data Platform

Users and Roles

40 - Our local IT administrators and corporate infrastructure services team all leverage the Veeam Data Platform for BC/DR of our server infrastructure. These users range from intermediate to advanced users of the platform, and Veeam makes it easy to cross-train them on the technology so they understand how to support and use it on the day-to-day to empower them.

Support Headcount Required

40 - We have around 40 IT users who support Veeam Data Platform in-house. These users will regularly monitor things, checking in daily on any backup/replication alerts or failures, and rarely need to open cases with Veeam support or escalate to corporate IT for larger issues. All of our branch site instances report back into one centralized Veeam Enterprise server for corporate IT oversight into how things are going at the branch level.

Business Processes Supported

BC/DR
DR Orchestration
Replication testing
Backups testing
Offsite backups

Innovative Uses

DR sandbox testing with SureReplica/SureBackup.
DEV/QA testing by cloning production servers.
P2V of workloads to VMware when we found VMware converter was discontinued.
V2V datacenter migrations between distinct vCenter clusters.

Future Planned Uses

DR replication between branches, not just datacenters
Migration to public cloud from on-premises
DR replication to public cloud

Likelihood to Renew

We are very likely to renew our Veeam Data Platform subscription. We've gone all-in on this solution, and it's been both working and scaling great for us. It's also overall cheaper than other solutions given that we have the flexibility of choosing our own storage platforms for backup storage, with tiering to object storage of our choice (AWS S3/Wasabi S3/Azure Blob).

Evaluating Veeam Data Platform and Competitors

Products Replaced

Yes - We replaced several platforms including Acronis Backup, Symantec/Veritas Backup Exec, Synology Active Backup for Business, Synology Hybrid Backup, Unitrends, VMware Data Protection, Legato Backup Solution, and EMC Networker. These were all distinct products, with different UIs, different capabilities, and no good centralized management solution to have them all report into for corporate oversight/management.

Key Differentiators

Cloud Solutions
Scalability
Integration with Other Systems
Ease of Use

The integration with VMware as well as the centralized Veeam Enterprise Manager solution, as well as the advanced reporting we get with the Veeam ONE platform were key parts of our choice to migrate to Veeam Data Platform. Veeam Enterprise Manager has been a great solution due to its comprehensive features and user-friendly interface. It offers centralized management and monitoring capabilities, allowing us to efficiently manage our data protection and backup operations across multiple Veeam backup servers.

The centralized approach Veeam Enterprise gives us enhances visibility and control, making it easier to monitor backup jobs, ensure data availability, and streamline administrative tasks. Veeam Enterprise Manager also provides self-service capabilities, empowering local IT administrators at branch sites to perform restores and manage their data without corporate IT intervention.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I joined the company later on in their BC/DR journey, and so I came into them having quite a few solutions already in-place. For new environments/offices we setup, we ensure that Veeam is part of that day-1 solution for the sites, to avoid the headaches of a fragmented BC/DR solution across our global office presence.

Veeam Data Platform Implementation

Implementation Rating

Once we had all servers running the latest recommended build (11 at the time, later upgraded to 12, with the latest patches) we were smooth sailing with minimal to no issues post-deployment. Our monitoring, management, and scaling works really well for our organization. We actually exceeded our rollout goals and were able to hit most of our sites upgrade schedules months ahead of schedule.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Yes - We broke our implementation up into doing one branch at a time. We setup our Veeam server/storage infrastructure side-by-side with the existing backup solution server/storage infrastructure. We then setup concurrent backups, confirmed our Veeam backups looked good, paused the old solution's backups, then sunset the old solution. We'd then move on to the next site and wash/rinse/repeat. Very simple.

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal - We had to go through our regular change management request process to make the changes to migrate, but it was templated and fairly straight forward. Once we proved through our POC the process, the approval process was minimal to get the changes pushed out to roll Veeam Data Protection globally.

Veeam Data Platform Support

Support Rating

We've had no complaints with the support experience for Veeam Data Platform. In fact, its one of the defining characteristics of the solution, in that we can reach out and expect a helpful and timely response from them, instead of trying to work through the issue ourselves. They stand behind their product 110%.

Veeam Data Platform Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Premium Support

We have the support contract that comes with the Veeam Universal Licensing solution. The support we get through the regular support channel on the Veeam website has been great, and for more advanced inquiries and solutions, we've been able to consult with our account manager and subject matter experts at Veeam with great success.

Bug Resolution

Yes - We've found very few bugs with the Veeam platform during our testing and regular use. When we did come across these edge case bugs, we were able to easily export and upload logs to Veeam support via the Veeam support portal, and work through with our support engineers to come to a solution. These solutions always came back in a timely manner.

Exceptional Examples of Veeam Data Platform Support

We've been able to come up with some great creative solutions to our DR strategy of one of our biggest datacenters where we're replicating hundreds of servers. Being able to whiteboard virtually with our subject matter expert engineers has been a great experience for us, collaborating with the professionals who know the product best.

Using Veeam Data Platform

Usability

Veeam was very easy to get started using. Their knowledge base is very well written, and the ability to launch into KB articles from almost any screen in the GUI. Online training materials are available, even without going through the certification process. Because of its popularity, it's also very easy to get community support in addition to the provided premium support.