You have most likely heard about Veeam and its growing success in the backup market for years. Its intuitive interface paired with abundant features, competitive pricing and simplified licensing model have set it apart from many of its competitors. It continues to remain a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and a fast growth favorite with IDC in 2016. I don’t think many people question the fact that when it comes to virtualized server backup and replication, Veeam is the holy grail. Physical server support has been missing since the beginning and has finally been introduced. For a while I think Veeam believed the market hype that datacenters were on the fast track to being 100% virtualized. I personally don’t know a single client that has achieved that lofty goal. Pretty much all businesses either have physical domain controllers, or a legacy application that their vendor refuses to support in a virtual environment. This leaves clients using two separate backup products. The only thing worse than failing backup jobs is trying to use two different products that you must buy, support and manage; all under duress! Administrators want one backup product with an affordable price, one support contract, and one pane of glass for management. Veeam’s missing physical backup functionality has kept it out of the sales conversation with several midmarket and enterprise clients in the past. Now, not only will they support backing up physical Windows and Linux machines on premise and in the cloud, they will also support backup of endpoint devices running Windows and Linux locally or even remotely. You can almost hear Veeam users rejoicing and crafting their plans to set their legacy backup software ablaze.
The release of these new agents means that clients can now use Veeam as their singular solution for backup & recovery of endpoints, virtual, physical, and cloud based workloads. They offer these agents in a few different editions. Let’s break these down a bit.
Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows
Free
The free edition expands quite a bit on the previous Veeam Endpoint Backup by adding some cool new features. The free version of the agent will now include Windows Server 2016 support, source-side encryption, periodic active full backup scheduling, and instant recovery to either a Hyper-V VM or even directly to Azure.
Workstation
The all new workstation edition contains all the features of the free one plus many more. It includes endpoint protection for mobile users, a remote configuration and management API, the ability to backup to Veeam Cloud Connect, and most importantly, 24/7/365 support.
Server
The all new server edition contains all the features of the free and workstation editions plus some more enterprise specific functions. It also adds in application-aware processing, transaction log backup functionality, and guest file indexing with search capabilities.
Veeam Agent for Linux
Free
The free version of the agent includes bare metal, volume level, plus file level backup and restore capabilities. It supports management via Veeam Backup & Replication plus a console UI and even command line. It also allows for pre/post job scripts, and built-in changed block tracking drivers to provide true incremental backups.
Workstation
The workstation edition contains all the features of the free one plus 24/7/365 support.
Server
The server edition contains all the features of the free and workstation editions plus some more enterprise specific functions. It adds pre-freeze/post-thaw scripts to support application-aware processing, and allows for multiple jobs for more specific RPO and different backup configurations.
Veeam’s rock solid core feature set, cloud integration, plus new physical server and endpoint functionality are taking it to new heights. Learn more about Veeam by visiting their website or by contacting Edge Solutions online or by phone at (888) 861-8884.