Small businesses need data protection that’s straightforward, reliable, and doesn’t require a large amount of resources to manage. When comparing Veeam and Veritas Backup Exec, it’s clear that Veeam offers capabilities that align better with the needs of small to mid-sized companies. Whether you are looking at advanced recovery capabilities (such as file-level recovery without a managing agent and/or instant recovery to any platform), seamless cloud integration, or simplified management, Veeam provides a comprehensive solution without the complexity. Let’s explore how Veeam stacks up against Backup Exec, using insights directly from the latest feature comparison document.
1. Recovery Without the Wait
Imagine a small business facing a server crash — every minute of downtime means lost productivity and revenue. With Veeam, recovery is swift and flexible. You can instantly restore physical servers, virtual machines, and even cloud-based VMs like AWS or Azure directly from your backup. This means you can restore workloads to new platforms, such as physical to virtual or Proxmox VE VMs to Hyper-V, for example. The best part? Veeam supports running multiple instant restores in a single job, so there’s no need to queue up machines one at a time.
Backup Exec only offers instant VM recovery for VMware and Hyper-V, lacking support for other environments (i.e. Proxmox VE and Nutanix AHV). Physical servers, NAS devices, and workstations? You’ll be out of luck. There’s also no option to recover multiple machines at once, which means more time is spent babysitting the restore process instead of getting back to business.
Key takeaway: Veeam offers broad recovery support and single job restores to make it a more efficient choice for small businesses that need to stay operational.
2. Simplified Application Recovery
Small IT teams often juggle multiple roles, so restoring specific items within complex applications — like SQL databases or Exchange servers — shouldn’t require extra tools. Veeam makes this easier by offering agentless application item recovery for Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, Active Directory, and more. You don’t need to worry about managing multiple agents or complex configurations.
Backup Exec, however, needs an agent inside the virtual machine for item-level recovery, complicating the setup and making the restore process more fragile.
Key takeaway: For small businesses, less complexity means more time saved. Veeam products offer an agentless approach that reduces the risk of errors and speeds up recovery.
3. Cloud Recovery Without the Hassle
With more businesses moving to the cloud, being able to restore data to platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure quickly is essential. Veeam Data Platform can restore data directly to these cloud platforms from your backups without the need to first copy them to an intermediate location.
Backup Exec, in contrast, doesn’t support direct cloud recovery. The only workaround is to use Azure Site Recovery to replicate VMs, which adds complexity and can create points of failure.
Key takeaway: Veeam offers direct cloud recovery that saves time and reduces the chances of errors, making it a better fit for you and your business with a cloud strategy.
4. Disaster Recovery with Minimal Downtime
Small businesses can’t afford to be offline for long, and Veeam’s built-in replication continuous data protection (CDP) is designed to minimize downtime. With CDP, you can achieve nearly zero RPOs (recovery point objectives) for VMware environments, giving you peace of mind that your critical workloads are protected.
Backup Exec doesn’t offer built-in replication or continuous data protection, so achieving similar RPOs would require separate solutions.
Key takeaway: For businesses looking to reduce downtime, Veeam offers built-in disaster recovery tools that are a straightforward and effective option.
5. Stronger Security for Small Teams
Security can be a challenge for organizations and backups are often the first target in ransomware attacks. Veeam’s backup solutions include multiple layers of protection, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), role-based access control, entropy analysis, scan capabilities, YARA rules, and immutability for on-premises and cloud backups. This ensures that your backups can’t be tampered with, even if your primary systems are compromised.
Backup Exec offers basic security features like 2FA and Kerberos support, but it lacks advanced capabilities like YARA-based threat detection and automated malware scanning that are becoming critical in today’s environment.
Key takeaway: Veeam’s robust built-in security measures give small businesses confidence that their backups are secure from modern threats.
6. Storage That Scales with Your Business
As small businesses grow, their storage needs change. Veeam’s Scale-out Backup Repository allows you to create a single virtual pool of backup storage that can span multiple backup repositories. You can mix storage vendors and models, making it easy to adapt as your storage footprint expands.
Backup Exec’s storage pooling is much more rigid. It doesn’t support mixing different storage types, making it harder to adjust when your storage strategy evolves.
Key takeaway: Veeam products include several flexible storage options to help small businesses scale without having to rearchitect their entire data protection strategy.
7. Simplicity without Sacrificing Control
Veeam products are designed to be easy to use without sacrificing control or flexibility. Its intuitive interface and automation features, such as DataLabs and SureBackup, mean you can monitor backups, test recoveries, and generate compliance reports from a single console. This is crucial for small businesses that may not have dedicated backup admins.
Backup Exec has a steeper learning curve and lacks many of the built-in automation features that reduce management overhead, making it harder to maintain without additional expertise.
Key takeaway: Veeam’s focus on usability and automation makes it a natural fit for small IT teams.
Final Thoughts: Veeam’s Advantage for Small Businesses
When businesses compare Veeam and Backup Exec, it’s clear that Veeam backup solutions offer more flexibility, faster recoveries, and a simpler overall experience. There are several key features that solidify Veeam as the best fit for small businesses, including:
- Creating backup files in a format that makes them portable, as backup files contain their backup data and metadata (autonomous and self-sufficient).
- If the entire backup infrastructure is lost, backup files can be easily moved, imported into a new VBR instance, and restored, no matter what.
- Backups that are not dependent on any component (deduplication database, management server).
- Automatically test and verify backups for recoverability.
- Use advanced virtual lab configurationsto create realistic test environments.
- Automatically perform several out-of-the-box tests, like heartbeat test, ping test, application initialization, and malware scan, as well as custom test scripts.
- Stage VMs into a sandbox during restore to run scripts on them so as to perform various tasks before restoring VMs to production (i.e. remove sensitive data before restore).
It’s not just about having a backup solution—it’s about having a tool that supports your business’s growth, keeps your data secure, and can be managed efficiently by a small team. For small businesses looking for a complete, scalable, and easy-to-use solution, Veeam is the smarter choice.
At Veeam, we want our customers to focus wholeheartedly on their business goals without concerning themselves with the security and integrity of their data. Each day, we are committed to ensuring that our products are highly efficient, dependable, and represent the pinnacle of data protection solutions in the market. To learn more about how we accomplish this, check out our rankings with Trustradius.
