Free vs. Paid licenses, architectural questions

[Andrey T.]

Hi all,

Right now we have this config in our production:
1. 4 ESXi hosts (blades in IMB BladeCenter)
2. Physical MS ActiveDirectory DC
3. Physical file server
4. Physical Exchange Servers (3 of them)
5. PostgreSQL virtual host + MS SQL virtual host
5. IBM SystemStorage TS2900 (tape)

What we want to do:
1. Backup some VMs to file server every day and 2 of them to the tape once a week
2. Backup some folders from file server to tape once a week
3. Backup DBs (pgsql + MSSQL) to file server every day and to the tape once a week
4. Backup AD + Exchange once a week to fileserver/tape
5. Backup Exchange mailboxes every day

All 'everyday' backups we plan to store for a 7 days, and 'everyweek' for 4 weeks.

So questions are:
1. Could we use free edition of backup & replication to meet our needs?
or 2. Which paid edition should we get?

[foggy]

Andrey, if you're ok with running full backups during each job run (no incrementals), you can go with free edition of Veeam B&R for most of your activities (pp.1-3) and schedule VeeamZIP with the help of PowerShell and Windows Task Scheduler. File to Tape job is also available in the free edition.

Otherwise, depending on the number of sockets in your hosts, Veeam Backup Essentials might be a more convenient choice, opening much more capabilities.

Regarding backing up physical servers, Veeam B&R doesn't do that.

[Andrey T.]

As I understand, Veeam B&R has some modules to back up MS AD and Exchange items. And Free edition also have these modules, but limited. What are limitations for these modules if free edition?

[PTide]

Hi,

<...>Veeam B&R has some modules to back up MS AD and Exchange items<...>

Correct, but VBR works with VMs only. You might want to try backing up your physical DC as well as an Exchange machine with Veeam Endpoint FREE. Though it was not specifically designed for servers, rather for desktop machines, folks reporting (please see here and here) that everything works good. With paid VBR version you can place your Endpoint backups to VBR repository - please check this thread for details.

Thank you.

[Andrey T.]

So: Veeam B&R works with VMs only, and have some functioonality to work over AD, SQL, Exchange.
Is there any description about this functionality - what it exactly does? I mean, if we could backup VM with MSSQL, what could we do else?

[foggy]

Backup SQL Server transaction logs and perform point-in-time restore, for example.