While Veeam may be getting a lot of publicity with VBR v13’s release of the Veeam Software Appliance (VSA) and the upcoming VBR v13 Windows release, promised by end of year, let’s not forget about Object First who builds some of the best immutable repositories specifically for Veeam.
While there haven been varying sizes of Object First Ootbi appliances available, they really have been focused on larger businesses and enterprises. Object First’s consumption model helped to address the gap when announced earlier this year at VeeamON San Diego 2025 to address the gap leaving the small and medium businesses (SMB’s) out in the cold by providing an Ootbi starting as small as 17TB as an operation expense with the ability got grow up to 7PB as needed. But there was still a gap for those wanting capital expenditures at a smaller size. For many of my customers, that was addressed by purchasing a small server, often a Dell PowerEdge T160 or R350 and deploying the Veeam Hardened Repository, and it works great, but how about a turn-key appliance that is ready to go out of the box? Welcome the Ootbi Mini!
Ootbi Mini
Today Object First has announced the Ootbi Mini. The Ootbi Mini is a small tower as seen below that provides all of the same hardening and ease of deployment as their rack-mount appliances, but now available at 8, 16 and 24TB capacities to address those small businesses that want a turn-key hardened repository but at the price-point that they can afford. And if OpEx still makes more sense, the Ootbi Mini is available on the consumption-based subscription as well. For many of my customers, that appliance is a perfect solution to take advantage of object storage on premises as the primary back repository, but hardened against bad actors out of the box with very little setup required. Object First announced that preorders start now with the first units shipping in January 2026.
Ootbi Honeypot
Object First also announced a new feature being added on v1.7, the Ootbi Honeypot that I’ve been looking forward to for a few months. While Honeypot’s have existed in various iterations for targets like SQL servers and websites, I’ve seen very little emulate a Veeam backup server. And with malware targeting backups, often now as their first priority once entering an evironment, Object First has been working for several months on creating a virtual Honeypot as part of the standard Ootbi appliance. It’s a simple feature to deploy. By simply assigning a static IP address or leaving DHCP enabled, and then enabling the Honeypot feature, the Ootbi will emulate a Veeam Backup & Recovery server and send alerts when tripwires are triggered indicating something malicious may be running on the network and is poking at the HoneyPot for further investigation. It’s incredibly simple to setup and will be available for all Ootbi appliances once the software version 1.7 is available.
Ootbi Fleet Manager Beta
Object First also announced the beta of the Ootbi Fleet Manager. Fleet Manager is intended to manage multiple Ootbi appliances from a single pane of glass as a hosted dashboard. This can include appliances across an enterprise including multiple datacenters. For me as a Service Provider, this seems to be a great value in being able to manage multiple Ootbi appliances across multiple customers giving me the ability to get reports and check appliance health across the board. This is one new feature that I’m very much looking forward to testing out. I’m sure there will be a lot more information to come.
