Yes, I stole the title for this post from none other than Archie Hendryx who has a blog over at ZDNet UK. Archie asks the question and then goes on to provide several points as to why Veeam is the best backup solution for vShpere 4:

So in looking around for solutions which best incorporated these new features I eventually came across Veeam. Utilising the thin provisioning feature to remove the overhead of no longer seeking out empty disk blocks and the unnecessary backing up of those empty blocks, Veeam also incorporates compression algorithms on the target backup device. Hence Veeam have a solution that not only reduces the amount of space used on the source host datastores but also the target backup storage device.

Of course WE believe that Veeam has the best solution for vSphere 4.0 and it’s good to see others out there recognize that fact. With Veeam Backup & Replication 4.1 not only do we fully support the vStorage API for Data Protection and the VDDK but we also fully support ESXi, for both Backup AND Replication. As I’ve been talking to partners over the past few weeks at VMware Partner Exchange and even our friends at Mirazon, they’ve indicated that Changed Block Tracking is perhaps the BEST reason customers should upgrade to vSphere 4 and our customers agree: Insane Backup Speed.

Veeam was also very happy to win Gold in SearchServerVirtualization’s Product of the Year for 2009, further proof that yes, Veeam Backup & Replication is the best backup solution for vSphere 4.

award

Finally, I’d like to address Archie’s final note in his post:

So while Veeam are currently leading the way, the time is certainly ripe for more third party APIs to be developed and incorporated making VM backup nightmares a thing of the past.

Of course we do face increasing competition in this space. I don’t want to start a comment war so I should mention that both EMC Avamar and Symantec Backup Exec 2010 do now have support for the vStorage API for data protection. Some of our other competitors have also “announced” support for CBT for so far it’s just been talk and no shipping product.

Does all this mean that Veeam is just taking a break to let our competitors catch up to us? Of course not! Over the next few months Veeam is preparing to change the way you think about backups…FOREVER! I can’t disclose anything yet, but watch this space, the countdown has begun!

UPDATE: In case you’re wondering, the next version of Veeam Backup & Replication will not require a complete reinstall/re-architecture. SureBackup is an entirely new feature that will easily integrate in with existing Veeam Backup & Replication installations.