When I first started working with Veeam Software before becoming a Veeam Vanguard and joining the Veeam Product Strategy Team, one of the things that was so appealing is that it’s so easy to get started with and use.
Before I knew it, I was backing up and restoring virtual machines with ease. Now, I want to take a closer look at what makes Veeam products so approachable.
Veeam just works
Like many people who love technology out there, I tend to leap before I look. Many times, beyond installation requirements I will not actually read any how-to-get-started guides if I am working in a lab. Has this come back and bitten me at times? Sure it has, but with Veeam, it hasn’t.
This goes beyond Veeam’s flagship product, Veeam Backup & Replication and extends to things like Veeam ONE, Veeam Availability Orchestrator, and to advanced features like storage integration. I haven’t met a Veeam product that I found difficult to install.
Top-notch product documentation
After installing Veeam Backup & Replication and backing up and restoring a couple of virtual machines, I wondered what else I was missing. As it turns out, I was missing quite a lot! The good news is that Veeam product documentation is top notch.
When I was getting started with Veeam, I primarily worked with Veeam Backup & Replication for VMware vSphere. There were two documents I read from back to front:
- Veeam Backup & Replication Evaluator’s Guide for VMware vSphere
- Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide for VMware vSphere
Here is why these two documents are so useful.
The Veeam Backup & Replication Evaluator’s Guide for VMware vSphere (there is also one for Hyper-V if you’re on that hypervisor) covers key getting-started information like system requirements, among other things. It also walks you through the complete setup of Veeam Backup & Replication, and more importantly, it walks you through the process of performing your first backups and restores.
Beyond simply restoring a full VM, which as we know is not always required, the Evaluator’s Guide shows you how to restore:
- Microsoft SQL databases
- Guest OS files
- VM virtual disks
- VM files (VMDKs, VMXs, etc.)
Once you are comfortable with the basics of Veeam Backup & Replication, the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide has the full details of all the great things Veeam can do.
Some of my favorite things beyond the basics of Veeam Backup & Replication are:
- Setting up a Veeam DataLab (You can read more about why these are so cool here and here)
- Restoring to Microsoft Azure
- Integration with Storage Systems (Which gets you the powerful tool, Backup from Storage Snapshots)
The Veeam community
One of the greatest parts of Veeam products is the community surrounding it. The Veeam community is huge, and there are a couple of ways to start interacting. First of all is the Veeam Community Forums, which is your one-stop shop on the web for interacting with other Veeam users, as well as some great technology experts that work at Veeam. You can sign up for free for the Veeam Community Forums right here.
Next, we have the Veeam Vanguards. They are a great group of Veeam enthusiasts and IT pros who share their knowledge not only on the Veeam Community Forums, but on Twitter and on their blogs. Simply search for the #VeeamVanguard hashtag on Twitter to get started interacting with these great folks.
It could not be easier to get started using Veeam products as we a free 30-day trial of many of our products, including the flagship Veeam Availability Suite, which consists of Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam ONE monitoring solution. You can download the free trial here.
If you are an IT pro, you can also get a completely free NFR license for Veeam Availability Suite. Be sure to fill out the request form here, and get started with Veeam in your lab.