VEEAM vs. Altaro... FIGHT!

[davethetekkie]

Hi all,

 

I've been working on planning a better approach to backups for one of our primaries and have arrived at a system that will tick all of the boxes. We'll be running a NAS unit in a secure cabinet in a separate building and will also be taking a backup to a set of ruggedised 2.5" externals for offsite backups at least for the time being. The only question is... VEEAM or Altaro. When I first approached our suppliers I had VEEAM in mind; we use this on our main site alongside VMWare and for familiarity it seemed to make sense to use the same software to support the Hyper-V environment at the primary, however Altaro is coming in a bit cheaper (to the extent that it's going to catch the eye of the school BM even if it is realistically only about £60) and seems fairly straightforward looking at the demos I've watched so far...

 

So the question is... back here on planet Earth and away from marketing land... Is anyone using Altaro and/or can tell me how it compares with VEEAM?

 

For VEEAM:

- Familiarity

- The gaffer likes to stick with known software where possible

 

For Altaro:

- Price

- The school head teacher likes to keep costs down where possible without compromising on capabilities (don't we all!)

 

The environment will be a Hyper-V 2012r2 system running 4 virtuals (at least 2 support live and critical SQL databases) on a shiny new HP DL360 Gen9 running a single Xeon E5 (at this point it's seeming very unlikely that we'll be going for a second CPU in this unit during its lifetime). The backups are the last piece of the puzzle and the only thing stopping me from taking the nice new host into production and taking the creaking DL120 G7 out of service before it takes itself out!

 

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Edited March 23, 2016 by davethetekkie

[zag]

Can't comment on Altaro, but veeam is the gold standard in backups these days.

 

I certainly wouldn't be choosing my backup product on price anyway!

[rich_tech]

Veeam for me, it works outstanding once it's sorted to your liking with minimal fuss, not looked at Alfaro though

[hallb15]

Altaro - its simple, works well, copes with multiple backup locations, including rotating external drives etc...

Their support is very good too.

We use it to backup 4 VMs to a NAS box in the same cabinet, then an 'offsite' backup to a second NAS in another building.

 

Granular level file restore is impressively easy and fast.

 

You can download it and try it free for 30 days with unlimited VMs, after that you can use it with 2VMs for free, forever (if you are a spiceworks user).

 

I've never used Veeam to compare, but its far superior to anything else I've used.

[Davit2005]

Veeam here too, not used Altaro.

 

Was a big user of Backup Exec before they ruined it years ago. Veeam is like next generation backup .

[Chuckster]

Most simple piece of software is Trilead VM Explorer. Dead simple and easy to use. Less of a beast like Veeam.

[PotNoodleTech]

I'd go get a weekend job in mcdonalds just to earn the £60 extra to give to the head of the primary so they could get veeam.

 

If you're decision on probably the MOST important and business critical piece of software you'll ever buy comes down to whether it's £60 cheaper or not then.... well I don't know what to say!

 

That being said, Altaro sounds good....but, and it's a BIG BUT........ it'd have to be a darn site more than £60 cheaper to tempt me away from the software genius that is Veeam.

Edited March 23, 2016 by PotNoodleTech

[smithson83]

But what do you guys do for the Local host?

As far as I can tell from my trial, Veeam is soley for the VM's, I don't want to be rebuilding my host from scratch in the event of a failure if I can help it.

[Chuckster]

But what do you guys do for the Local host?

As far as I can tell from my trial, Veeam is soley for the VM's, I don't want to be rebuilding my host from scratch in the event of a failure if I can help it.

 

Could you not use Veeam to replicate the VMs to another host? I am using Trilead VM Explorer and not only do I backup the VMs to a NAS, but I also replicate the VMs to a server that is approx. 6 years old. This is enough to tide me over should the worst happen to my main host server while I work on it.

[zag]

But what do you guys do for the Local host?

As far as I can tell from my trial, Veeam is soley for the VM's, I don't want to be rebuilding my host from scratch in the event of a failure if I can help it.

 

Why not? Rebuilding a host takes 20mins.

 

If you really care that much, then just run one in parallel.

 

Backing up hosts is completely missing the point of visualization.

 

The beauty of veeam is you can even host a VM on the backup server temporarily with its instant restore feature.

[smithson83]

I have two hosts that Replicate to each other. I backup one host using BackupAssist. This allows, full/granular restore of the VM's, but also a Bare Metal restore of the Host as well. My only issue with BA is that it takes a donkeys age to backup the server (seem to only do a full backup each night ~ 6hrs), compared to ~20mins for Veeam to do just the VM's (Obv Imcremental)

[smithson83]

Why not? Rebuilding a host takes 20mins...

Backing up hosts is completely missing the point of visualization...

 

1) It takes a lot more than 20mins to Install, update and configure MS 2012R2 Datacentre

2) I disagree, backing up the host is good practice, and saves time when all about you are flapping

[davethetekkie]

So... So far the consensus is to go with the first instinct and go with VEEAM. Cost is not the deciding factor but certainly the first thing looked at by those making the final decision. I just like to give them information backed up by real world experience not best guess, hence my reason for asking the question! We like VEEAM, I ASKED for VEEAM but was given pricing on Altaro with a glowing reference from a supplier I trust not to supply the wrong thing.

 

(For the record I've done the McDonald's thing twice... And I'd need a LOT more than £60 to entertain wearing the current uniforms!)

 

Much appreciated all!

[localzuk]

1) It takes a lot more than 20mins to Install, update and configure MS 2012R2 Datacentre

 

Not really. A basic 2k12R2 setup, even in a Hyper-V cluster, takes very little time. The only slow bit is updates, I'll admit, but that's about it!

 

2) I disagree, backing up the host is good practice, and saves time when all about you are flapping

 

Its not the "normal" way of doing virtualisation though. The VMs are the important bit. The host is a dumb host that's only running your virtualisation hypervisor.

 

We don't backup "hosts" here, just VMs. (OK, not strictly true - we also have a physical file server for some stuff, and that gets backed up but it is now a dinosaur and will be replaced with a VM when we next refresh servers). I just can't see any advantage to backing up bare metal Hyper-V servers.

[smithson83]

I guess, a Weekly Bare Metal Recovery using Windows Server Backup could be sufficient, and use Veeam to do Nightly incremental backups of all the VM's. Best of both worlds, have a configured server to restore from (with little teaks etc made along the way, plus all the updates etc), plus the ludicrously fast backup times of Veeam for all the, as rightly put, important VM bits.

[StevieM]

Altaro - its simple, works well, copes with multiple backup locations, including rotating external drives etc...

Their support is very good too.

We use it to backup 4 VMs to a NAS box in the same cabinet, then an 'offsite' backup to a second NAS in another building.

 

Granular level file restore is impressively easy and fast.

 

You can download it and try it free for 30 days with unlimited VMs, after that you can use it with 2VMs for free, forever (if you are a spiceworks user).

 

I've never used Veeam to compare, but its far superior to anything else I've used.

 

Basically, what he said.

[mrbios]

Neither, Arcserve UDP.

 

Very little it won't do that veeam can, and at half the price. It's been rock solid for the past 2 years now. I used it to do a recovery of a folder within a users exchange mailbox earlier today, worked a treat. File level restores are dead simple. Full VM restores are simple...not sure what else to say.

[PotNoodleTech]

If it's half the price then my ears just perked up!

[mrbios]

If it's half the price then my ears just perked up!

 

I must admit, I'm going back two years in pricing terms! things may have changed since i last had my per socket pricing, but when i purchased Arcserve UDP this was the socket pricing i had:

UDP: £228

Veeam: £450

 

Over 8 sockets Arcserve worked out £1778 cheaper...and actually cost me £1828! nearly half the price!

[Davit2005]

I'd go get a weekend job in mcdonalds just to earn the £60 extra to give to the head of the primary so they could get veeam.

 

If you're decision on probably the MOST important and business critical piece of software you'll ever buy comes down to whether it's £60 cheaper or not then.... well I don't know what to say!

 

That being said, Altaro sounds good....but, and it's a BIG BUT........ it'd have to be a darn site more than £60 cheaper to tempt me away from the software genius that is Veeam.

 

Yep, You only realise how important your backups are when you need them the most.

 

Jus love the way Veeam works and on the whole the support has been good/excellent in my own experience.

Edited March 24, 2016 by Davit2005

[hallb15]

Altaro cost me £217 for up to 5VMs. Then its £63 annually after the first year for support/updates. Their pricing is based on the number of hosts, not the number of sockets.

 

NOTE: If you run a local exchange server and want the item level restore feature you'll need the Unlimited edition which is nearer £400.

[Gibbo]

How do you guys handle offsite tape backups with Veeam? I've just moved to a school which uses this system.

 

At my previous schoool we had MS DPM and used to do a tape backup on Sunday night. On Monday it would put a tick next to the tapes in my library which were ready to be moved offsite, but I can't see how this works on Veeam. I have a Dell 16 tape autoloader attached.

 

There's a Sunday night tape backup job set here, but I don't know which tapes its used to take out.

[Davit2005]

If you look at the report it will tell you which ones were used.

 

I've also created Media Pools, you can edit the Media Set name which will then show up in the Media set Column. While in the pool set the retention so tapes are not overwritten.

[Cazale]

But what do you guys do for the Local host?

 

Fairly certain Server Core VM host would fit on a DVD. You could install it, update it, and Ghost it if the 1 hour set up time is a big issue (personally, I wouldn't even bother. Rebuilding the host is trivial).

[FragglePete]

Sorry to ask the question mid topic, but it's sort of related.... What's the hardware config/requirements for Veaam? What do you install it on? Just hearing such good things and looking to review our BackUp Exec setup (which does VM backups quite nicely), but some of these VMs are done as file by file agent back ups because of their size (file shares).

 

TIA

 

Pete