Veeam vs. Datto: Comparing Two BC/DR Heavyweights

This post was originally posted at https://invenioit.com/continuity/veeam-vs-datto/

Comparing?disaster recovery solutions ?is an important first step to identifying the right data backup system for your organization. Whether you’re comparing Veeam vs. Datto or any other BC/DR vendor, it’s important to dig into the details of each offering to determine the best fit.

Nearly all of today’s major backup solutions sound similar on paper and indeed provide a similar range of services. But when you dig deeper into how those systems work (and what they require to achieve true business continuity), you begin to see how they diverge in important ways:

• Backup processes and capabilities
• Recovery options
• Protection for various?disaster scenarios
• Ability to meet your specific continuity objectives
• Cost and complexity of deployment and management

Veeam and Datto both offer robust backup solutions that help businesses recover rapidly after data loss.

So, how do they differ? Here’s what you need to know.

Veeam Overview

Headquartered in Switzerland, Veeam was established in 2006, initially offering solutions for monitoring virtual infrastructure via its Veeam Monitor and Reporter products.

The company later merged the two products into one and also began offering data protection via its Backup & Replication software, which was designed to protect virtual environments built on VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors.

The company has since expanded its product offering to include a range of backup solutions for virtual, physical and cloud infrastructures. Veeam has grown from just 10 employees in 2008 to over 4,000 today, with offices around the globe.

Datto Overview

Founded in 2007 by Austin McChord, Datto has experienced similar growth over the last decade. Headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, the company innovated the industry by developing its own data backup devices, which eventually evolved into the SIRIS flagship product.

Datto now has offices around the world, providing data protection and other business continuity technologies for more than a million users globally as of 2022. The company's core BC/DR solution is referred to as "Unified Continuity," because it unifies backup hardware, software and cloud storage in a single, fully integrated solution. Datto also offers solutions for SaaS data backups, enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) and network infrastructure.?

Veeam's Key Products

1) Veeam Availability Suite

The Availability Suite is Veeam’s top-tier product, designed to provide robust backup and monitoring capabilities for mid-size to large enterprises.

Availability Suite combines Veeam’s two core products – Backup & Replication for data protection and Veeam ONE for monitoring – into a single solution. It can be deployed to protect cloud, virtual and physical environments.

Veeam markets the product as a “comprehensive enterprise suite [that] empowers organizations with advanced capabilities and powerful tools to effectively achieve their goals of achieving complete data protection, with high availability and reduced downtime.”

Availability Suite is offered via several different editions with varying capabilities and services:

• Community
• Standard
• Enterprise
• Enterprise Plus

Protected environments include:

• Virtual: VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Nutanix AHV
• Physical: Windows and Linux
• Cloud: Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and other third-party public clouds

For on-site backup and storage, Veeam offers integrated appliances through select hardware vendors, including Cisco, Dell, HP and others.

For cloud storage, companies can use one of the public cloud providers listed above or use their own private cloud.

Initial comparisons – Veeam vs. Datto:

• The Veeam Availability Suite is primarily designed for enterprise businesses. So for smaller organizations that have less intensive workloads, the Availability Suite is probably overkill in comparison to Datto’s own top-tier BC/DR solutions, which come in options for smaller companies as well.
• Datto’s disaster recovery solutions are focused intently on data protection and continuity, so there is not exactly an “apples to apples” comparison with the Availability Suite. For example, Datto’s products do not feature the VM monitoring and reporting functions of Veeam ONE, which is more of an analytics solution for enterprise businesses with heavy workloads.
• For more of an “apples to apples” comparison, you’ll want to compare Veeam’s Backup & Replication product with Datto’s flagship BC/DR solution, the?Datto SIRIS . Let’s look first at Veeam’s product …

2) Veeam Backup & Replication

Veaam Backup & Replication can be deployed as a standalone solution, separate from the Availability Suite (without the monitoring and reporting capabilities of Veeam ONE). Otherwise, the backup capabilities are virtually the same as those listed above: providing protection for virtual, physical and cloud environments.

Backups are image-based and replicated to the cloud of your choice. A host of recovery options are available, including full VM restores, instant file-level recovery and eDiscovery for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and Active Directory.

Veeam’s advanced replication capabilities provide exceptionally high availability, thanks in part to built-in WAN acceleration and speedy off-site disaster recovery options.

Like the Availability Suite, Veeam Backup & Replication comes in three editions to meet the varying needs of organizations: Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. For example, capabilities like replication from a backup are available in all editions, while features like the WAN acceleration are unique to the top-tier Enterprise Plus edition.

Initial comparisons – Veeam vs. Datto:

• Like Veeam, the Datto SIRIS protects virtual, physical and cloud environments with image-based backups that can be performed almost continuously (as often as every 5 minutes).
• Datto’s hybrid cloud technology stores your backups on-site and in the cloud (two geo-redundant locations) and offers a wide range of recovery options, both granular / file-level and full restores.
• The key differentiator between Datto and Veeam is that SIRIS is a fully integrated solution, whereas Backup & Replication requires configuring Veeam solutions with other hardware and cloud services to achieve the same level of continuity.
• To be clear, both products can deliver true business continuity and disaster recovery, locally and in the cloud. But when it comes to the deployment and management needed to achieve continuity, the products couldn’t be more different. Below, we dig into that contrast a little further.

3) SaaS Backup for Microsoft 365

Veeam released a Microsoft 365 backup solution in 2018 (formerly Office 365), helping businesses safeguard their SaaS data from common threats, such as accidental deletion, mass overwrites, misconfigured data migrations and so on.

Veeam’s Microsoft 365 backup product performs timely backups of all data within 365 Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Microsoft Teams. Companies have the option of storing the backups on-premise or in the cloud of their choice, though this ultimately means they need to manage the storage themselves.

A search function allows you to quickly find missing files and restore them on a granular level. Veeam touts “25 ways to restore” from its M365 backups, though this mostly includes options for restoring items with and without keeping original files, direct into the applicable O365 product or by email, ZIP, etc.

Veeam markets its Microsoft 365 backup as “a key component of the Veeam Availability Platform,” though it can be deployed a standalone product, separate from its other data backup solutions.

Initial comparisons – Veeam vs. Datto:

• Datto offers its own Microsoft 365 backup solution, known as Backupify. Backupify provides automatic SaaS protection for all M365 data, including Microsoft Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Calendar and Contacts.
• Backupify automatically backs up Microsoft 365 data up to three times a day, and like Veeam’s offering, offers a quick granular restore function to recover lost files and folders. Data can be restored directly back into the user’s account or downloaded to the administrator’s computer.
• A key difference between Veeam vs. Datto is how and where the Microsoft 365 backups are stored. While Veeam offers the option to store them locally and in the cloud, there are caveats to both of those options. Customers need to manually configure and manage the cloud storage, which takes time and can be unnecessarily burdensome. Additionally, using local storage eats into local bandwidth and can affect on-premise server resources.
• Datto stores the backups in its own cloud, with an unlimited storage option, and it takes as little as 5 minutes to set up.

Datto vs. Veeam: Additional Considerations

If you’re comparing the BC/DR solutions from both providers side by side, keep in mind that they don’t match up neatly. Datto is designed to be a fully integrated hybrid-cloud backup solution out of the box, while Veeam will require configuring a few different solutions together, such as the backup software, off-site replication, local storage, cloud storage, etc.

Here are some things to consider:

• Veeam partners with hardware vendors to provide the on-site backup appliance, which powers the backup process and provides local backup storage. Or, you can use your own hardware. Datto provides its own integrated appliances, which are available in desktop and rackmount versions to fit the capacity needs of the business. Datto also offers the option to deploy SIRIS as an imaged or virtual system.
• Configuring various Veeam solutions together may be preferred by larger organizations that have complex infrastructures, but that’s not ideal for everyone. More configuration ultimately means that the deployment will take longer and also require more time to manage, which adds to the cost. Additionally, add-on integrations and software licenses for different components can make the investment even more expensive.
• Businesses looking for greater simplicity in their deployment, while maintaining control over all aspects of the backup process, will appreciate Datto’s fully integrated solutions. The cloud backups, too, are stored in Datto’s own geo-redundant cloud, which is built on the same technologies as the on-premise SIRIS device to create a truly seamless continuity solution.
• Veeam and Datto both score points for how they perform the backup process. Datto’s Inverse Chain Technology and Veeam’s Reverse Chain Technology provide incremental-like backups that eliminate dependency on the backup chain, where the most common problems occur. Each new backup is fully constructed and not dependent on prior backups.
• Both offerings offer a range of recovery options to ensure that data can be restored in nearly any scenario. This is a critical capability to look for in all BC/DR products, as it ensures that organizations can minimize downtime and resume operations quickly after events like?ransomware ?attacks and hardware failure.

What Others Say about Datto vs. Veeam

Researching user reviews is always a good idea when comparing data backup solutions. But keep in mind that most online reviews don't provide a full picture. Usually, they are highly specific to the reviewer's unique backup objectives and IT infrastructure, which are different for every company.?

That said, here are some recent Datto and Veeam reviews that stood out during our comparison:?

Veeam Reviews

·???????"Veeam is a good solution but we have had some issues with the solution that took some time to work through … Not all functions are as intuitive as they could be in the app. Streamlining some of the workflows would give my team a better understanding of the underlying processes." -Director of Information Systems (Source: Gartner)?

·???????"[Veeam Backup & Replication] is a very powerful tool that I have been using for over 3 years already for backup of VMWare ESXi. Easy to integrate with ESXi host, Vsphere center, and hyper-V as well." -IT Manager (Source: Gartner)

·???????"Veeam can create backups quickly and restoring VMs seems to be a very straightforward process … [However] I have heard nightmares for the cloud-based backups and due to that I have steered from that attempt and went with a different company. -Christopher S. (Source: TrustRadius)

Datto Reviews

·???????"Datto gives us peace of mind that our data is backed up consistently and properly. We have 13 servers being backed up hourly. We find this image-based solution is the best solution when it comes to backups. Not only can we go back to restores every hour, but we can go back to the first image we created of the server." -Rob R. (Source: TrustRadius)

·???????"Datto is a great disaster recovery platform that allows us to backup all important data and restore it at any point when a disaster occurs, including malware attacks or third party ransomware attacks. It helps to backup data on cloud including servers, virtual machines, software and even operating systems, so that failover and recovery is done from cloud itself." -Decision Analyst (Source: Gartner)

·???????"From the beginning our Datto partner was always available and ready for any issues that came up. After 7 years, they have only gotten better. The Datto appliance and forever cloud service is a great DR solution with a bunch of options for Hyper-V, VMWare, and more to recover several different ways out of the box. Would recommend every day and twice on Sunday." -Sr. Systems Engineer (Source: Gartner)

Frequently Asked Questions

1) What's the difference between Datto and Veeam?

The primary difference between Datto and Veeam is the implementation. Datto is a fully unified backup solution that combines an on-site Datto backup device with replication in the Datto Cloud, whereas Veeam is deployed on disparate hardware and cloud services at the discretion of the business. Both solutions deliver a comparable level of business continuity and disaster recovery; they differ in?how?that continuity is achieved and in how the technologies are deployed.

2) How does Datto backup work?

Datto uses an incremental-like backup process called "Inverse Chain Technology." Instead of creating chains of dependent incremental backups, each recovery point is stored in an independent, fully constructed state. This means there is no lengthy rebuild process when restoring a backup (which is where problems often occur with traditional incremental backups). Backups are stored locally and in Datto's geo-redundant cloud.

3) How does Veeam backup work?

Veeam uses forward and reverse incremental backups.?With a forward incremental backup, an initial full backup is taken, and then the virtual machine’s new, unique blocks are transferred to a separate .vib file for each restore point thereafter. With reverse incrementals, the last restore point is a full backup file, which is created by copying the unique blocks of the VM and then injecting that into the full backup. The blocks that represent the previous restore point are put in a reverse incremental file that will exist for each restore point in the backup chain. Backups can be stored locally and/or in the cloud of the user's choice.