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Product: Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE

Version reviewed: 1.1.2.119

Operating System Tested: Windows 10 Build 1511

This is my first review and I have say this is a review that I never thought I would write. Veeam has been “killing it” as a virtual server backup platform for years now and their claim was always on the virtual side only. I thought they would never make a product that did physical OS install backups.

That ended when Veeam announced that they were developing a workstation level backup that was for both virtual and physical installed operating systems. I was definitely happy to hear it. If there is one thing that any backup software needs to succeed, that is trust. If an IT pro can’t trust that the backups are working as they are promised the product will not be successful. I have seen my share of backup platforms that erode our trust as IT pros. Veeam has always been in my good graces so entering the workstation side and incorporating physical OS backups were welcome sights for this backup weary IT pro. This review will not waste time showing you how to install it. I will never do that kind of review. It’s pointless to show how to click through an install of a simple product like this. So what I will be doing here is telling you why this is worth your time and not about how to set it up. This product is free and there are not many products that I am aware of that improve upon what Veeam is offering here. (If there is please email me or post a comment! I am always looking for new product to test.)

Let’s get down to what the product offers that separates it from the free built in Windows backups.

Improvement #1: Incremental backups over the network

This one always killed me with the Windows backups. For those that do not know, Windows backups will only backup one restore point over the network. There are ways to get around this but for the most part it is a pain. I had to plan to have iSCSI targets to a NAS for each PC to backup or have shadow copies take a snapshot of the backup share after every backup (If I even had room for FULL backups every night to be snapped!), or have a secondary local drive that copied backups to a NAS on a schedule. This eliminates that need.

Improvement #2: Creation of recovery ISO or disk using the local PC drivers

This one is a major time saver for when things go wrong and you are trying to recover with a bare metal restore. The recovery ISO or disk has the PC NIC and disk drivers built into it so there is no time wasted in trying to have these ready to load during the restore process. The one restore I attempted was very fast and it was an over the network restore.

Improvement #3: Link to an existing Veeam Backup and Replication server

You can link your Endpoint backups to an existing backup and replication server for reporting, single location management, and other shared storage settings. Very cool if you have a huge deployment in the works and need to centralize your Endpoints. This competes well with Microsoft’s System Center capabilities.

Improvement #4: System Images with the ability to exclude files\folders

You can do this with Windows backups however in my experience it has been more of a pain than a feature. Endpoint Backup seems to work well and it is easy to implement.

Improvement #5: Ability to manage the number of restore point easily without giving up the entire backup disk

With Windows backups you don’t have a lot of options when it comes to setting a particular volume as a destination for backups. Yes, there are command line options but this becomes a pain. Endpoint allows you to control the number of restore points and the location of the backups without giving up control of the destination volume to Windows backups.

Another point to make, Veeam offers a plug in for those MSPs out that that use Labtech. I have not been able to test this or even see it. It is available here though.

Pros:

-Several Improvements over Windows backup including incremental backups over the network

-Great Recovery environment

-Bare Metal Restores

-FREE

Cons:

-No universal restore option

-No email alerting built into the software

These are the main points I wanted to cover with the Endpoint Backup review. I feel like this product is vastly superior to the built in Windows backup tools and should be a must of any IT pro in charge of workstation backups. Especially if you are already using Veeam Backup and Replication for your back end installs. Download Endpoint here.

Rating = Highly Recommended

 

Rating Scale = Not Recommended, Recommended, Highly Recommended