Veeam stopped being a backup product and became a platform some releases ago, and the naming has confused buyers ever since. Understanding what the full stack covers in 2026 is what keeps you from paying for tiers you will never turn on.
Protection, Monitoring, Recovery
The platform spans backup and replication, monitoring and analytics, and recovery orchestration. Each layer answers a different question: whether copies exist, whether they are healthy, and whether they can be brought back in order.
Why the Layers Matter Together
Backup without monitoring degrades quietly, and monitoring without orchestration tells you about a problem you still cannot fix quickly. The layers are worth more combined than the sum of their datasheets suggests.
Choosing Your Tier
Selecting a Veeam data platform tier should follow from which layers you will actually operate, because monitoring nobody watches and orchestration nobody rehearses are indistinguishable from features you did not buy.
The Hardware Underneath
The platform's recovery speed is bounded by the storage beneath it. Sizing repositories for restore throughput and for the I/O that synthetic operations consume matters more to outcomes than the tier badge does.
Making the Decision
Inventory the workloads, write the recovery objectives, then map tiers against them. Buy the smallest tier that meets the objectives and spend what you save on repository capacity and scheduled restore testing.
