How does Azure Backup differ from Veeam Backup & Replication?

Veeam has a version for Azure but there are organizations, like ours, that are considering moving to an Azure environment and wonder if Azure Backup is better than Veeam Backup and Replication (Veeam VBR). Here is what we found:

Azure Backup provides different options. First, their Azure native IaaS level backup. This option runs as a service in the Azure platform. The second option involves running Azure Backup via the Mars agent. The Mars agent has the advantage of providing a lower Recovery Point Objective (RPO) - 8 hours instead of 24. The Mars agent option doesn’t support restore to IaaS functionality.

Azure stores the data in a recovery vault. It compresses the data but doesn’t allow deduplication. At this point we started considering using Veeam Backup & Replication.

VBR provides continuous availability for cloud, virtual, Kubernetes, and physical workloads. We liked that we can recover individual files easily at VM and file-level. The backups are image-based and fast. It integrates to MS SQL and Oracle, which translate into instant recovery. The versatility of the platform is another advantage. And that VBR provides immutable storage gives us peace of mind.

I think it is great for small and medium organizations’ virtualized environments but it is so scalable that it could also work for larger businesses. On top of that, the price is reasonable.

VBR has some things to improve, though. Getting the hang of the SAN-based backups can be tricky. It would be also nice to have admin controls for moving backup storage between devices. It takes a bit too long to start the management console. They don’t provide monitoring on backup jobs either.

Conclusions

We went with Veeam VBR because of the ease of use, the fast rollback, and deduplication features. The price was also better.