2 Free Backup Solutions for Working from Home

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If you’re working from home, it may be time to assess the need for endpoint backup solutions. The reality is when working arrangements change, data creating and sharing change too. This is rather important when you consider we’re used to working in the office with presumably more direct access to central resources and peers. If this changes, we should think about backing things up.

In 2014, when Veeam first launched the product now called “Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows,” it was known as “Veeam Endpoint Backup Free.” Since that time, a number of things have happened. Veeam added centralized management, a server-grade CBT driver, cluster support and more. The same goes for Veeam Agent for Linux, which received a number of improvements and enhancements to keep physical systems backed up and recovery options ready.

Free Windows laptop backup solutions

But here we are in 2020, and did you know that both Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows and Veeam Agent for Linux are still available as a free edition in standalone mode? This is very powerful if you want to back up laptops, PCs or Windows tablets at home. If you have quite a few systems at home, you may want to put in Veeam Community Edition, which will have central management and support for other types of workloads (this is free also!). You can also back up server operating systems, or, in this case, back up a Windows laptop to a removable USB drive:

With Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows, there are a number of different targets backups can go to. A removable USB Drive  would be “Local Storage” but you can also put backups on a NAS device (a shared folder from a storage system — or a path on another computer), Veeam infrastructure components such as a repository or a Cloud Connect target, or to Microsoft OneDrive.

One safeguard when backing up a laptop is to eject the backup media once the backup is completed. For a laptop, and the USB drive that has the backup, this is a simple way to immediately put the backup offline to prevent it from being touched by ransomware. This option is shown below:

Free Linux laptop backup solutions

Aside from Windows operating systems, Linux systems can also enjoy protection with a Veeam Agent for free. The Veeam Agent for Linux protects in the same manner: an image-based backup solution that can provide bare-metal recovery and more. The image below shows the Linux Agent configuration:

Windows and Linux work-from-home users rejoice, you have a solution to back up your endpoints for free. Veeam’s products can deliver the simplicity, reliability and flexibility to give you the confidence to restore if needed. You can get started right away with the free editions of both Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows and Veeam Agent for Linux.

The main difference between Veeam Community Edition and the standalone agents is management, support for VM backups and an easy way to deploy the agents. Therefore, if you have a few systems at home and want the centralized management of your backups, look no further than Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition. Or, for or a free trial of the fully functional Veeam backup solutions, contact your CDW Account Manager.