Veeam Backup – What is it

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

There are some ‘techy’ words in this article, marked with an ‘*’; there is a glossary at the bottom to help translate them into English.

Why have a backup solution?

Backing up can be easily overlooked and often ignored as it can be a significant cost for something you may never need. However, for many reasons, it has become a big talking point in recent years. This includes people learning the hard way by losing critical data, malware becoming more advanced and prevalent, and ISO* standards requiring backup policies. This has made it vital for any business to have a backup solution to keep data safe and secure. One of the market leaders in backup solutions is Veeam. In this article, I will go over who Veeam* is and how their software can be used to create a secure and easy-to-recover backup solution.  

What is Veeam?

Veeam is a backup solution designed to cover all areas of data security and recovery whilst staying easy to implement and use. It achieves this using various innovative features, as well as constant updates.

Key features of Veeam

• Early Threat Detection – Using AI Technology, Veeam has a built-in, low-impact Malware* Detection Engine that detects suspicious activities.
• Anomaly Detection – Veeam backups constantly check your setup for errors and can identify potential malicious activity.
• Backup Verification – Veeam checks backups to ensure data integrity and provide malware-free recovery.
• Avoid Reinfection – Veeam quickly identifies ransomware and prevents malware from being restored using content analysis.
• Automated Clean Recovery – Veeam allows you to undertake recoveries for an entire setup using malware-free restore points.
• Secure Access – Lockout malicious attempts to gain access to your data.
• Immutability everywhere – Veeam provides cloud backup solutions that mean you are constantly backing up your data offsite that is immutable*

How to use Veeam to achieve best practices when backing up

The backup basics

There are some basic rules to follow when backing up to help provide you with a secure and reliable backup system.

The first is the 3-2-1 rule. This rule was originally three copies of data on two different media and one offsite. As with all things, however, it has evolved and changed slightly over time, and people will likely have a slight variation. Still, at the core, they are very similar.

The three copies of data should be as follows:

• The 1st will be your ‘production data’, which is the original/current version that you work on and edit, which will be saved locally so that it is accessible at all times. For example, the data that is held on your computer’s hard drive. 
• The 2nd will be an onsite backup of your data that would preferably be backed up daily.
• The 3rd is having an offsite backup. This can be done via a third party as a cloud backup. If that is too expensive, you could have multiple drives in rotation on the onsite backup that you rotate periodically and have the other at an offsite location such as your home.

Veeam has their own version of this, which they call the 3-2-1-1-0 rule. They follow the same rule but with an extra 1 and 0. 

They say that after the offsite copy, you should have one offline air-gapped* or immutable copy and then have 0 errors after an automated backup test and recovery verification – the backup test service is included in the Veeam backup solution and is a great way to save yourself from finding out your backups have been invalid or from manually testing each backup after completion. 

How Veeam helps

Veeam has built-in features that help achieve the 3-2-1(-1-0) rule. This allows you to backup the same data to multiple backup locations and integrates with many 3rd party cloud backup solutions so you can back up offsite without any extra steps or using any other software. It also allows you to make the backups immutable for some time. It can test any backups to ensure the data is recoverable using their ‘SureBackup’ feature. This can all be automated, including early warning notifications and failure errors to help you keep your backups running effectively. 

Do You Need Support?

Here at Iconology, we have extensive knowledge and experience in setting up, managing and administrating backup solutions. We are happy to help you keep your data safe to ensure that you can be at peace knowing your data is always there when you need it, no matter what happens.

Reach out to us today to discuss your requirements or answer any questions you may have.

Glossary

• ISO:  ISO is a worldwide federation that sets standards to ensure quality, safety and efficiency. They provide guidelines for businesses to comply with to ensure consistency.
• Veeam: Company that provides software. This article refers to their backup and recovery software.
• Malware: A broad term used to describe malicious software.
• Immutable: A term used in this article to refer to data that cannot be modified. 
• Air Gap: An isolated backup at a different location than the production data.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)