With most of our infrastructure now in the cloud, we're left with just a few on-prem VMs and physical servers, primarily running internal services that are easy to reinstall. We're currently using Veeam for server backups, but I've been facing increasing issues with it over the last couple of years—problems with patches, a bloated product, and slow support. I'm considering alternatives, but given that our remaining servers could be manually reinstalled, I'm wondering if it's worth investing in another paid solution. I heard about the Community Edition of Veeam which allows a central installation for up to 10 VMs. The main downside seems to be the lack of support, which hasn't been great anyway. I'm curious if there are other downsides I might not be considering, like whether I can still direct backups to Azure storage while staying under that 10 VM limit.
4 Answers
In all honesty, if you're only managing 10 VMs or less and don’t really rely heavily on Veeam support, you could try the Community Edition. Just keep in mind that if you ever scale up or need extensive features, you might hit a wall.
I don’t know if it’s exactly against the terms, but a lot of companies prefer a licensed version to avoid headaches. They want to ensure they have the best support when something goes wrong, which seems like a fair stance.
I get that, but with my experience with them, I’m not too concerned about missing support! Just want a backup solution that works.
Running the Community Edition in an enterprise environment could pose compliance risks due to the EULA restrictions. You might be putting your organization at risk by not having a proper license, especially if any audits come up.
Thanks for the insight! I checked the links I mentioned and didn't see anything indicating it's against the EULA. Can you clarify what compliance aspects could be a concern?
Go for it! As long as you stick to that limit of 10 VMs, it could definitely work for your setup.
For sure, I’ll just be cautious with scaling. But it sounds like I could make it work for now.