Veeam Backup for virtual machines: protection with secure copies

In an increasingly demanding and digitized IT environment, maintaining a robust enterprise data backup and recovery strategy is becoming more and more essential.

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Veeam Backup & Replication has established itself as one of the leading solutions to ensure data resilience, offering a reliable, scalable and prepared for threats such as ransomware or critical infrastructure failures. This tool allows you to make secure copies of your virtual machines (VMs), restore data instantly and ensure a clean, fast and centralised recovery.

1. Why virtual machine backup is critical in 2026

Current risks: ransomware, crashes, accidental deletions

The growth of ransomware attacks, human error and hardware failures has put the business continuity of many companies at risk. According to ITIC's 2024 report on the cost per hour of IT downtime, many medium and large enterprises estimate that each hour of downtime can cost between $100,000 and more than $300,000, depending on the industry and criticality of the service.

What happens when your virtual environment is not reliably backed up?

The absence of a backup and rapid recovery plan can lead to total data loss, production downtime and legal consequences if regulations such as RGPD are not complied with.

Backup as a basis for business continuity (BCP/DR)

Veeam enables business continuity planning (BCP) and disaster recovery (DR) with its focus on high availability, data integrity and automation of critical tasks.

2. What is Veeam Backup & Replication, and how does it protect virtual environments?

What Veeam does in virtualised environments

Veeam Backup & Replication creates full and incremental copies of your VMs, allowing full, granular or per-file restores. Its Change Block Tracking (CBT) technology optimises performance and resource usage.

Compatibility with VMware, Hyper-V and other hypervisors

It is compatible with the main hypervisors on the market, such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and platforms based on Proxmox or Xen, facilitating integration with other IT solutions.

Copy types: full, incremental, and per-image copies

• Full backups: full VM image.

• Incremental backups: only changes since the last copy.

• Immutable backups: cannot be modified or deleted, key for protection against ransomware.

3. Main advantages of using Veeam on virtual machines

• Fast recovery and minimal downtime: Veeam enables instant recovery of VMs, files or applications, minimising downtime.

• Safer backups against ransomware: With immutable backups, automatic verification and AES-256 encryption, a clean and secure recovery is guaranteed, even in the face of cyber-attacks.

• Fewer errors and more centralised control: Centralised management enables scheduling, monitoring and auditing of all backups from one intuitive console, improving traceability and compliance.

• Scalability for uncomplicated growth: The system adapts to small and large environments, in hybrid, on-premises or mixed cloud, thanks to its scalability and flexibility.

4. What you should review in your virtual backup strategy

1. Frequency and retention (RPO/RTO):  Define clear objectives of RPO (tolerable loss) and RTO (expected recovery time) according to the type of data.

2. Where to store copies (local, cloud, hybrid): Evaluate local, cloud (Azure, AWS) or mixed options, leveraging Veeam's multi-cloud integration.

3. Restore testing: what many companies don't do: Simulating recoveries allows you to test the effectiveness of your strategy and ensure guaranteed recovery.

Quick "backup done right" checklist

1. Active immutable backup

2. Scheduled automation

3. Secure offsite storage

4. Active monitoring and alerts

5. Regular restore tests

5. Typical use cases in enterprises with virtualised environments

Recovery after ransomware in VMs

Rapid restoration from protected backups to minimise operational and economic impact.

Restore a VM due to hardware failure.

In minutes, Veeam allows the VM to be up and running on another host or infrastructure.

Point-in-time file recovery without stopping production

Granular recovery allows access to specific files without restoring the entire VM.

Migrate or change hypervisor with backup ready

Veeam makes it easy to migrate environments between hypervisors while preserving data integrity.

Veeam Backup & Replication is the ideal solution for companies looking to protect their virtual infrastructure with a reliable, secure and easy-to-manage tool. Whether to comply with regulations, prevent threats or ensure continuity, Veeam offers all the necessary capabilities to maintain full control over your systems and data.

Discover how to optimise your enterprise backup strategy with solutions tailored to your virtual environment. Contact us for more information.