Many organizations still work with old systems in their IT environment and therefore still rely on old or traditional ways of backup, even though this is expensive, not always reliable and often unnecessarily complex. When we look at what our partners are looking for, it often comes down to reducing hardware costs and reduce complexity. Especially now that ransomware is increasingly involved, a good backup strategy is important.
There are several aspects to consider in order to reduce backup costs, namely:
- Hardware and software; As described earlier, it is often too complex, and therefore special hardware and the associated software are required to keep the solution running.
- Licenses; Additional required licenses such as those from Microsoft are often forgotten to be included in the solution. And thereby incur even higher costs.
- Impact of downtime; What is often forgotten to include is the layout of the environment that needs to be backed up. Have you ever tried to restore a 6TB file server with 24 restore points? This often takes longer than the agreed agreements described in your SLA or service…
- Knowledge; In-house resources with knowledge of traditional backup solution are a dying breed and that makes it difficult to find a replacement if a colleague decides to leave.
- Vendor Lock In; Traditional IT environments often suffer from a 'vendor lock-in'. Looking at today's modern IT environments, we want it to be flexible and to allow the solution to adapt to where your company's business grows. With 'vendor lock-in' this is almost impossible and it can cost your company more money.
So, considering what have been said; what should you pay attention to if you use or plan to use Veeam?
- Is it possible to make the IT environment less complex? Less complex means less operational costs involved. A good example of this is the backup strategy that you can use. For example, Veeam has developed a GFS (Grandfather-Father-Son) retention policy that is much more efficient in preserving backups for a longer period of time.
- Discover how you can organize your IT environment in a smarter way. For example, a large file server can be divided into smaller file servers, so that there is less impact for partners and this in turn benefits your operational costs.
- Have you looked at your Veeam contract? Maybe you have a 0 point commit contract and you need to report a 1000 points every month, then it is cost efficient to increase your commit contract to an 800 point contract so that you pay less per point.
In summary, backup solutions must be flexible, able to grow with your company without the extra costs of the 'vendor lock-in', without the complexity and with the right contracts that ensure that you do not pay more than necessary.
Please contact me or one of our solution specialists if you need more information on Veeam backup solutions or cost optimization in general.
Martijn Verhoeven, Veeam Specialist at Insight
