Veeam 6 features

[mpasaa]

Veeam 6 has some nice features but it needs works to be truly Enterprise.

1. Restores are painfully slow and we don't understand why there isn't an option to restore over the same medium as the backup (i.e. Fiber)?
2. When restoring, the window stays open and you can't minimize and move on to something else within this backup app--is that by design?
3. Running Veeam inside a VM---terrible. We got amazing backup speeds initially but it's NOT consistent and seems overly sensitive to network conditions and even bandwidth and traffic inside the VM environment. We run vsphere 5 and the lastest Veeam build but I gave up and went back to the physical server with DIRECT SAN access which is night & day compared with using Virtual appliance mode.
4. error message need to be more intuitive as most are vague and general at best.
5. Migration to new servers--painful at best. I was able to detach the SQL DB and move the RDM physical mode LUN from the VM to our physical server. however, some jobs would still work and others I had to reconfigure. The MAP TO BACKUP option doesn't work all the time and the jobs fail saying they cannot access or find the image files when they are exactly in the same repository. In fact, I kept drive letters and service accounts identical.
6. Surebackup - good idea but last time I tested it constantly errored out at vmtools or something which, by itself, is not a dealbreaker. However, if I have to manually check every surebackup job to ensure if completed it defeats the purpose of being able to automate backup checks.
7. Need more robust reporting in this app if it is to be Enterprise class (all backup apps seem to have this issue or require some convoluted reporting server to be set up to gain this feature which should be built-in).

Just some of our observations....this has a ways to go to really be considered Enterprise class in my opinion. We are even considering dumping Veeam and opting for a netbackup appliance OR add-on to our Netbackup tape/app configuration to get us the same features as Veeam. It needs to work 100% of the time or it is useless as a backup option.

[mpasaa]

Any chance some items will be fixed in the next build?

1. In the jobs pane, hitting refresh resorts all of the columns and I have to click the column header to resort
2. In the same jobs pane, hitting refresh resizes the column widths as well cutting off some info and forcing another manual resizing of the column
3. Allow restoring over the same method as the backup--i.e. if backed up over fiber then restore over fiber. Restoring ONLY over LAN makes this tool almost useless when it comes to fast recovery--and NO, IR is NOT a solution due to the severe performance issues when doing so. It's better when the VM is off.
4. When using FLR, allow user to close or at least minimize the window so other tasks can be done.
5. Surebackup--haven't tried this in a while but previously it would always error out in the alerting for vmtools....when I manually checked or re-ran the job the VM does boot up in the isolated lab BUT this defeats the purpose of 'automation' if I have to check to make sure the surebackup job resulted in a successful boot of a backed up VM. On the right track but it needs tweaking.

That's all I can think of at the moment. The restore performance and speed is definitely a MAJOR issue as we've had instances where restoring a VM took many hours. Thankfully, most were non-critical and downtime was OK...had it been a critical server requiring to be back online quickly this app would have failed the test. If we could restore over fiber at the same speeds as seen during the backups it would be so much nicer.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Mike,

1. Restores are painfully slow and we don't understand why there isn't an option to restore over the same medium as the backup (i.e. Fiber)?

Please take a look at our sticky F.A.Q. topic (storage section) which should answer your question.

That's all I can think of at the moment. The restore performance and speed is definitely a MAJOR issue as we've had instances where restoring a VM took many hours. Thankfully, most were non-critical and downtime was OK...had it been a critical server requiring to be back online quickly this app would have failed the test. If we could restore over fiber at the same speeds as seen during the backups it would be so much nicer.

To recover failed VM very quickly, you should be using Instant VM Recovery feature. Have you had a chance to try it?

2. When restoring, the window stays open and you can't minimize and move on to something else within this backup app--is that by design?

You can close VM restore dialog window, it will not interrupt the restore process. To get back to this restore session you should navigate to Sessions tab and then double-click on a desired restore entry to review its details.

The MAP TO BACKUP option doesn't work all the time and the jobs fail saying they cannot access or find the image files when they are exactly in the same repository. In fact, I kept drive letters and service accounts identical.

With all technical issues it is always best to open support ticket and let our technical team investigate the issue for you. To avoid problems with backup mapping procedure, make sure you follow these steps if you change backup files location.

Hope this helps!

[foggy]

1. In the jobs pane, hitting refresh resorts all of the columns and I have to click the column header to resort
2. In the same jobs pane, hitting refresh resizes the column widths as well cutting off some info and forcing another manual resizing of the column

This is already on the list of fixes for the next release.

3. Allow restoring over the same method as the backup--i.e. if backed up over fiber then restore over fiber. Restoring ONLY over LAN makes this tool almost useless when it comes to fast recovery--and NO, IR is NOT a solution due to the severe performance issues when doing so. It's better when the VM is off.

There are certain issues using vStorage API that make direct SAN restores extremely slow. But for some types of restore (full VM recovery, for example) Veeam can use hotadd restore (Virtual Appliance mode), which performance is comparable to one that can be achieved by using direct SAN access mode.