@coliver said:
@art_of_shred said:
Yup, Unitrends has been heavily focused in the physical appliance, with integrated software and storage, while they offer software-only options. They also, AFAIK, hold the record on supported OS's. Veeam is software protection of virtual, primarily.
Does Veeam not offer things like Exchange or SQL backup? That seems like a fairly big downside to that solution.
@scottalanmiller said:
The other big difference is that Veeam is targeted on virtual backups only, they do not address applications or operating systems, only hypervisors (HyperV and VMware ESXi.)
Unfortunately, this is not accurate. Veeam does focus only on virtual servers only. While they focus on VM-level backups, they do not ignore enterprise applications. They have tools to item-level restore:
- Exchange Server
- SQL Server
- Active Directory
In fact, a tool like their Veeam Explorer for Exchange doesn't even require Exchange to be mounted. You can use this tool to recover items as long as you have access to the MDB files for Exchange 2010 and higher. They have a separate tool for Exchange 2007 which I use right now temporarily.
During a complete meltdown, you can actually spin up the failed server using the backup file until you can recover and move it to it's final destination.
Veeam natively handles both backup and replication. The two are not necessarily dependent on each other and can play into your D&R plans. You can have instant failover and failback. Licensing of these features are always on the source machines, not the target hosts. So if you just have one box, you can drop in a cheap one and replicate to it without requiring additional software.
With Enterprise (both in Essentials and their high-end version which does WAN optimization) you get SureBackup Lab. This is super freaking awesome. Basically, you can craft a test isolated test lab and automate your backup testing in the lab. I have this setup for all my backup jobs. Basically what happens after each backup is that it will spin up the VM from the backup file (after spinning any dependency VMs like a DC first) verify that it can boot, NICs can be pinged, and any application-specific services and roles like Exchange, AD, and SQL can actually be verified. I have this setup and all my backups are verified EVERY DAY. One last thing is you can also use the SureBackup Lab for testing. I often, drop in some VMs when I want to do some testing of changes I want to do with productions VMs. The lab comes with a Proxy appliance that you can punch a hole in to get access to the isolated lab. I'm doing this now with our ERP software where I'm making some updates. I've given Accounting access so they can play their testing with real data, but in a safe environment.
Want complete insight into your virtualization environment? Disk IOPS, datastore latency, CPU utilization over time, etc. Well, they will give it to you for free VeeamOne. Paid version comes with a few more features. This is pretty awesome.
Got non-servers you'd like to backup too. Well, they have a free tool for that also now that will allow you to manage that within your backup console.
Sorry to post a wall of info, but these comments worried me and I felt the need to provide a better insight into Veeam. I've played with Unitrends and they have a nice product, I just don't feel like it comes close to this product and its flexibility. So it just backups VMs. Yeah, but the tools they give just rock.
