While we’ve had educational content in the past for partners, having this End User Training is our next exciting milestone.

This is also a good time to introduce John Martin, our new director of Global Education Services at Veeam. John has a lot of experience in many areas of the development and delivery of learning content, services and the associated technology infrastructure. He has delivered addresses at the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning, Computer Training World, Training Directors Forum, WBT Producer, ASTD, the British Association for Open Learning, and SmartNet in New Zealand.

We are happy to have John on the Veeam Teeam! Welcome aboard!

You can reach John via email at john.martin@veeam.com if you have any questions, comments or observations on any of the educational resources for Veeam products.

This initial release of Veeam End User Training covers the following products:

· Veeam Backup & Replication

· Veeam ONE

· Veeam nworks Smart Plug-in for VMware

· Veeam nworks Management Pack for VMware

This training resource will answer some of the top design and architecture questions that new and existing customers may have about our products. Popular how-to topics are also addressed in these modules. For each product, the Main Content summarizes the product. Then, when you scroll down and view the Product Videos tab, you’ll find additional videos for specific technical tasks related to the product. This is shown in the following figure:

Veeam product training is another valuable resource to help IT pros, partners and prospects be properly equipped for successful virtualization. Other resources include the Veeam Forums, Product Demos, Featured Webinars, the Veeam Blog, the Veeam Community Podcast, Backup Academy and V-Index.

Chris comes to Veeam after 9 years of working with Microsoft as an IT Pro Evangelist. He loves technology and has a passion for helping others implement solutions that make their lives work better. Chris is an accomplished public speaker with a fun style that conveys deep technical concepts in ways that are easy to understand. Chris is the co-author of “Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Administration Instant Reference” as well as a contributing author of “Mastering Windows Server 2008 R2.” He loves to write and says, “It is a great experience writing technical material! People use that book to make their environment better. I love being a part of their solution!”

Chris spends a lot of his time working on emerging technologies and teaching IT Professionals how to take advantage of those opportunities. One of his key areas of focus in the past 2 or 3 years has been on Hyper-V and the virtualization space.

While delivering a series of seminars focused on Cloud design Chris was introduced to Veeam and its Backup and Replication tools.

“I knew right away that this was something I wanted to be involved in! The tools were focused on the future of IT. They were designed with virtualization in mind. They were easy to use and they just worked. As soon as backup and replication v6 came along with support for Hyper V I knew I had to get on board with Veeam! The opportunity here is Amazing!

Chris loves Hyper V and thinks that it will be a key player in the hypervisor marketplace. He is excited to be a part of the growth and development of Veeam!

You may have also noticed that we’ve done some redesign on the blog. All posts will now feature a header that includes a photo of the author, an example including Chris’ picture is below.

Welcome to the Veeam Teeam Chris!

On Feb. 1, 2012 Veeam Backup & Replication will have new pricing. This is timed loosely with the release of Veeam Backup & Replication v6, which brings 72 new and improved features to our flagship product. The big areas of new features are enterprise scalability, enhanced replication, and support for Hyper-V and 1-Click file restore capabilities, among other things, in the new Enterprise Manager web interface. Did you catch the series of four webinars about the new features of version 6? These webinars as well as their slides are available from our v6 launch page: Extending the lead in VM backup.

Currently the list pricing for Veeam Backup & Replication is $599 and $899 per socket for Standard and Enterprise Editions, respectively (USD). The new pricing effective Feb. 1 will see the Standard Edition at $699 and Enterprise Edition at $1099 (USD). Now is the time to take advantage of the features of Veeam Backup & Replication v6—before the price increase. To get started, contact your sales team or click here for more information.

(Note: for Russia and CIS, the new pricing went into effect December 1, 2011. Other pricing may vary by region)

This is important because today we have released Veeam Backup & Replication v6 after over a year of R&D effort. What makes this release so significant in my view is that it’s your release. When I say it’s your release I mean that if you take a look at all the new features and enhancements, they were almost all driven by direct customer and partner feedback.

Better Scalability? You got it!
Our new proxy/repository architecture allows you to scale out a single Backup & Replication server to thousands of VMs. You can still go with a single server and let it be the proxy and repository but as your environment grows you can now grow with it.

Enhanced Replication? Yep!
If you take a look at the What’s New around replication alone you’ll see that this is one of the areas we focused most of our attention on. Re-IP? Check. Failback? Check. Traffic Throttling? Check. Better seeding? Check.

Support for multiple hypervisors? Yes!
Now I know not everyone asked us to support Windows Server Hyper-V but a fair number of customers and partners did, as well as a lot of Hyper-V shops that wanted the functionality of Veeam Backup & Replication. The fact that you get support for VMware and Microsoft virtualization all from a single install and interface is huge news.

I'd like to give a big Thank You to all of our customers, partners and prospects who had so much to do with this release. We get our best feedback through our forums so please continue to post great feedback there. We're already working on the next release and we'll have some BIG news to share early next year (again, from YOUR input) so watch for the countdown clock.

For a comprehensive overview of v6, please check out the webinar series that includes product demos: http://vee.am/v6webinars

Although that earlier list is now public in the What’s New document, we wanted to show this in another way. We decided to create a numbered list for a better look at v6 features and enhancements: a 30,000-ft. view from the top. 

WOW! What a list!

Here is the list of Veeam Backup & Replication v6 new and improved features (drum roll….):

1. Scalability: Dedicated proxy to run backup and replication jobs
2. Scalability: Repository to hold backups and replication metadata
3. Scalability: Dynamic job assignment
4. Scalability: Intelligent load balancing
5. Scalability: Windows target support
6. Scalability: Multiple vPower repositories
7. Scalability: Multiple user Veeam console connections
8. Scalability: Log collection wizard
9. Replication: Leverage hot-add for disk writes
10. Replication: Replication can target a cluster object
11. Replication: Proxy to proxy compression (up to 10x improvement)
12. Replication: Multi-select operations for multiple VM failover
13. Replication: Enhanced job configuration
14. Multi-hypervisor support: Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere
15. Multi-hypervisor support: Easy license exchange for different hypervisors
16. Multi-hypervisor support: Dedicated Hyper-V off host proxy
17. Enterprise Manager: Job editing
18. Enterprise Manager: Job cloning
19. Enterprise Manager: FIPS compliance
20. Enterprise Manager: Improved interface design
21. 1-Click File Restore
22. File restore operator role
23. Traffic throttling
24. Improved domain controller handling
25. More efficient CPU usage for backup jobs
26. Multiple TCP/IP connections per job
27. Optimization for WAN transfers
28. Source data retrieval optimizations
29. Exclude virtual machine swap file
30. Enforceable backup window
31. Simultaneous backup and replication jobs now permitted
32. Backup mapping from existing backup file
33. Backup metadata file for quick foreign imports
34. Enhanced backup format file
35. Backup data file alignment to 4K on writes
36. Write enhancement for deduplication targets
37. 2-proxy replication architecture
38. Replication state protection
39. Improved job reports
40. Wizard navigation improvements
41. 1-Click automated failback for replication jobs
42. 1-Click permanent failover for replication jobs
43. Active rollbacks of replication jobs
44. Improved replica seeding
45. Replica mapping
46. Re-IP for replicated VMs
47. Full support for distributed virtual switches with backup and replication
48. Automatic replication job update on failover or failback
49. Additional replication job options
50. Veeam Quick Migration
51. SmartSwitch migration cutover
52. Instant VM Recovery migration
53. Individual file copy
54. 1-Click full VM restore
55. Virtual disk restore option to inventory on existing VM
56. Thin disk support for VM file level restore
57. Hot-Add restore
58. Hot-Add replication
59. Multiple VM restore
60. Network mapping on restore wizard
61. VM managed object reference preservation on restore
62. User profile indexing
63. Support for GPT and simple dynamic disks
64. NTFS permission preservation on guest file restores
65. Optional search server for less than ~100 VMs
66. Smaller guest index catalog size
67. Real-time statistics improvements
68. Job bottleneck monitor
69. Loss of VM warning for removed VMs
70. Support for unmanaged VMware Tools installations
71. PowerShell extended to support new v6 functionality and objects
72. 1-Click automatic upgrade for proxies and repositories

How cool is that! Are you curious about Veeam Backup & Replication v6? Check out Veeam’s series of webinars, with VMDoug and Gostev!

Which v6 features are you most excited about? Share your feedback below.

This quarter, VDI hypervisor statistics are in place. Also this quarter, the number of entities surveyed this quarter increased to 578. As always, our respondents were not necessarily Veeam customers, Veeam prospects, or previous-quarter respondents. Find out more at www.V-index.com.*

Results worth noting this quarter include:

• The average consolidation ratio was 5.1 to 1
• VMware hypervisors took 67.7 % of the server virtualization workload
• Reliability, application performance and data protection were top virtualization concerns

We recently interviewed Martin Turze from Vanson Bourne, the firm that conducts V-index research and reporting. Listen to our interview with Turze by clicking Veeam Community Podcast, episode 29.

The full report is available as a PDF and there is a nifty infographic available as well. The full press release is available here.

*No site registration required.

We released our hotfix on 20 October, 2011, that means it took us a full 57 days to release a hotfix for Veeam Backup & Replication to FULLY support vSphere 5. One of the main issues with Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0.2 was that it didn’t work for all processing modes with VMSF5 (just like every other vendor at the time of this writing). A processing mode popular with our customers is direct SAN access utilizing the vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP). In order to support direct SAN access for VMFS 5, we had to move to the latest version of the VDDK API which was only made available the same day as the GA release of vSphere 5.

57 days to incorporate a new version of a low-level API
1368 hours to fully test
82,080 minutes to fix things that worked previously

So, rather than trying to shout from the rooftops that we supported vSphere 5 the day it was released (or even weeks before), we wanted to make sure everything worked. We make backup and DR software after all, and we don’t want our customers getting into a mess with their production data based on claims by marketing. I think Anton did a good job of explaining our position in the forums, please take a moment to read his post.

Before you go checking our downloads page for the hotfix, please be advised that it’s only available through Veeam support. Since this isn’t a full release, and not all of our customers will need it, we are only making it available via support. Of course, Veeam Backup & Replication v6 will have full support of vSphere 5 when it’s released later this year, and that will be our official release vehicle for vSphere 5.

To meet this goal, Veeam has sponsored the creation of a FREE community resource site that provides training on basic principles of virtualization and data protection. These basic principles are presented in a product-neutral fashion, meaning that there are no specific backup products mentioned. The only time specific products are mentioned is when the hypervisors (VMware ESXi, Hyper-V) are mentioned, as well as specific guest operating systems and applications that we need to protect as IT professionals.

This content will initially be released as eight tracks, each with a specific theme that helps deliver the fundamental principles of data protection for virtual machines. Further, this content is aimed at providing those who are very new to these technologies with what they need to proceed confidently in embracing a virtualized infrastructure and backing up virtual machines.

We’ve worked really hard on this program. I’ve been lucky to have access to a great web technology team, thorough project management, and steadfast executive support for this project as well as an all-star list of contributors for this first wave of content. Speaking of which, here is our list of contributors for the initial release of Backup Academy:

Greg Shields: Greg holds both Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert status and is a senior partner at Concentrated Technology. Follow Greg on Twitter @ConcentratdGreg.

David Davis: David holds VMware vExpert status as well as Cisco CCIE and VMware VCAP credentials. David is a popular blogger, author and expert in the virtualization community. Follow David on Twitter @DavidMDavis.

Elias Khnaser: Elias holds VMware vExpert status and is the CTO at Sigma Solutions. Elias has authored a number of books on IT certifications and is a popular blogger on a number of websites. Follow Elias on Twitter @EKhnaser.

Eric Siebert: Eric holds VMware vExpert status and a number of IT certifications. Eric has authored several books and is a popular blogger. Follow Eric on Twitter @EricSiebert.

Rick Vanover: Rick holds VMware vExpert status and a number of IT certifications. Rick is a popular blogger and podcaster. Follow Rick on Twitter @RickVanover.

These contributors have produced this first wave of content, and over time, we will add more to the fold. Individuals who go through the first wave of content and pass the exam will become Backup Academy certified. Backup Academy will add content over time, both for VMware and Microsoft platforms, so stay tuned for more information about new material.

So what do we do now? Well, spread the word! Backup Academy is online now at http://www.backupacademy.com and on Twitter at @BckpAcademy.

From the site:

V-index is an online virtualization industry study performed by Vanson Bourne, an independent market research company. It is based on a survey of 500 enterprises across the US, UK, France and Germany and is designed to measure 3 parameters – virtualization rate, consolidation ratio and primary hypervisor in use.

So what do you get at V-index.com? First off, you get a quick look at virtualization adoption in a series of 3 different areas: penetration rate, consolidation ratio and Hypervisor in use:

You also get access to a series of snippets that you can put on your own blog or website. The data behind these snippets will be automatically updated each time the v-Index is updated (currently quarterly). Here’s a sample snippet:

V-index There are many different sizes and styles to choose from so feel free to pick the one that works best for your site. Also on the site is a page full of infographics on the v-Index results. These infographics show the splits by country for each of the 3 areas in the survey:

Of course, you can also download the full V-index report in PDF format and also provide feedback on other areas or data points you’d like to see in the V-index.

Again, V-index is meant to be a community resource, Veeam’s involvement is to sponsor the survey by Vanson Bourne and make the results available to everyone. You can use any of the data on the V-index site, please check the privacy policy for more information..

For today’s demanding IT environments, this review provides insight in to Veeam’s approach to providing the right tool for the job of protecting VMware vSphere VMs. This review also analyzes many features of Veeam Backup & Replication including:

• Instant VM Recovery
• SureBackup Recovery Verification
• Universal Application Item Recovery (U-AIR)
• Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
• Data transfer options

Perhaps the most telling story within this review is the recovery times reported with Veeam Backup & Replication. Leveraging Veeam’s Instant VM Recovery features, VMs were verified to be restored 77x faster than a standard full-image backup tool!

This ESG Lab Review is a free download from the Veeam website.