Veeam Blog

Veeam Backup & Replication

Nov 30th 2011

v6 is YOUR Release!

Posted by in Announcements |


On the back of every Veeam business card is our motto “Listening to you, building the tools you need.”

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

Oct 24th 2011

vSphere 5 – What took us so long?

Posted by in Announcements |


vSphere 5 was released (GA) on 24 August, 2011. Immediately after the release customers started asking us if we supported vSphere 5 with Veeam Backup & Replication. Some other vendors claimed vSphere 5 support even before it was released, so what took us so long?

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.

Aug 16th 2011

Oh Tolly!

Posted by in Analyst |


Back on July 20, we were notified by Tolly that they were doing a comparison report on Veeam Backup & Replication v5. Tolly claims to provide “fair, accurate and well-documented testing.” But what if one of your competitors hires Tolly for the testing and determines the criteria? Can it really be fair and accurate? Tolly sent us the basic test criteria, and it was obvious to us that the sponsor had cherry picked the criteria to show their product in the best possible light and to ensure that our strongest features – such our vPower functionality – would not be tested at all. In no way would these criteria constitute a comprehensive test of both products’ strengths and weaknesses.

We have repeatedly asked Tolly who is sponsoring the report but they have declined to tell us. As of this writing, Veeam has no idea who is paying Tolly for this report (but we have our suspicions). So, in an effort to be truly fair and accurate, we proposed the following to Tolly:

  • Veeam co-sponsors the tests and the report, and pays half the sponsorship fee;
  • Veeam participates in determining the test criteria on an equal basis with Tolly and the other sponsor; or, alternatively, test criteria are determined by a mutually agreed-upon neutral third party;
  • Both vendors’ representatives are present during the tests;
  • The tests are conducted in September 2011. Veeam’s key people who can participate in the project are on vacation or on other projects until September 15; and
  • The tests are conducted with Veeam Backup & Replication v6, which will be released in Q4 2011.

The above proposal was not accepted by Tolly, and we were told the process was too far along with the sponsoring vendor. They did tell us that we could sponsor our own report at a later time if we like.

My question now is how fair and accurate will this report be? According to the Fair Testing Charter (parts below, emphasis mine), we will be allowed to review the findings and provide feedback.

Finally, we provide them [Veeam] with the opportunity to give us an official commentary on their results, the essence of which is included in any documents we might publish.

It’s interesting they say the “essence of which.” To me it means that they will listen to our feedback but will edit it into an “essence” that puts their client in a better light. Likewise, “might publish” says to me that if Veeam were to come out ahead in the test, even with cherry-picked criteria, the report will never see the light of day.

It appears that Tolly has been doing this type of “fair and accurate” testing for quite some time; I just hope no one loses millions of dollars this time based on Tolly’s findings: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/compressed-into-nothingness-20100808-11qdh.html?from=age_ft (the Tolly report is available here)

Steve Duplessie from ESG has a great take on head-to-head testing and why ESG doesn’t do it: http://www.thebiggertruth.com/2010/03/the-politics-of-testing/

And I particularly like Simon Bramfitt’s assessment of Tolly: http://blog.simonbramfitt.com/2011/06/tolly-trumps/

Vendors in the backup space have also had their share of problems with Tolly, including Quest: http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-management/just-when-you-thought-backup-wars-were-dead-654?page=0,0[BB1]

It’s clear to us that one of our competitors intends to use this Tolly report as part of a competitive marketing campaign against us. Veeam did NOT participate in the testing and, from our vantage point, the criteria have been designed to avoid testing typical customer scenarios as well as very features that make Veeam Backup & Replication v5 stand out as the best solution on the market. So please treat any report from Tolly as suspect.

Apr 12th 2011

Using the iSCSI initiator within Veeam Backup & Replication in a VM

Posted by in Veeam Backup & Replication |


Last week when I outlined a few considerations about whether to install Veeam Backup & Replication as a virtual or physical machine, a follow-up conversation reminded me of an important configuration scenario. If Veeam Backup & Replication is installed on a virtual machine with an iSCSI storage processor as the production storage for vSphere, you can configure the iSCSI initiator within the guest virtual machine. This enables Veeam Backup & Replication to access the production storage for vSphere directly.

More >

Mar 16th 2011

Advanced storage option to configure source deduplication

Posted by in backup |


Veeam Backup & Replication provides deduplication capabilities to save storage space, but more importantly reduces transfers during a backup or replication job. The advanced settings of both backup and replication jobs have a storage option that optimizes the job for either a local target, LAN target or a WAN target. This option is shown below:

image

These three options are very important in how the backup deduplication is implemented. First of all, this deduplication algorithm is based on the source. This means that the deduplication algorithm is applied before any transfers are made from the ESX(i) host to the backup or replica of a virtual machine. To implement this, a backup or replication job has three choices in the job definition:

Local target: The local target option has the lowest deduplication potential as it uses larger blocks of data for the deduplication algorithm, but it also has the least CPU overhead.

LAN target: The LAN target option implies that the Veeam job definition points to a remote resource such as a mapped drive or NAS appliance. This deduplication algorithm for LAN uses a block size half the size of the local target option, with slightly higher CPU overhead to implement the deduplication algorithm.

WAN target: The WAN target optimization uses a deduplication algorithm with blocks half the size of the LAN target. Again, to increase deduplication, it will reduce the amount of transfer for the backup or replication job, albeit with increased CPU cycles to implement the most granular option within these options.

The WAN target option can add deduplication efficiency to the incremental jobs. Check out this recent Veeam forum discussion where one user identifies storage savings with the WAN target option.

Using the deduplication and compression features together can make the Veeam Backup & Replication files for backup jobs as small as possible. If backup jobs are organized from the originating template within a folder and like operating system(s); the optimization potential increases for deduplication and compression.

This functionality is explained in more detail on page 14 of the User Guide of Veeam Backup & Replication.

Feb 17th 2011

2010 – What a year for Veeam!

Posted by in Awards |


Doug Hazelman here and I wanted to share with everyone just what a great year 2010 was for Veeam. As we move into 2011 and continue our upward trend I’m sure more great things are around the corner but I really believe that 2010 is one of the years that will go down in Veeam history as being one of the best.

SureBackup and vPower

We started off the Spring of 2010 with our big announcement regarding SureBackup. This announcement was important for us because we knew that it was going to take some time to understand just what Recovery Verification was all about.

More >

Feb 16th 2011

Backing up virtual machine templates with Veeam Backup & Replication v5

Posted by in backup |


One of the conversation points that comes up frequently when discussing data protection for virtual environments is the backup of the template virtual machine (VM). A lot of work is put into making a VM template; therefore, it may be worth the disk space and time to back it up.

Backing up a VM template will function a lot like backing up a powered-off VM (See my recent post on backing up powered-off VMs). Within Veeam Backup & Replication v5, there is an option to switch the view to include templates in the display, as shown in the figure below:
image

More >

Jan 25th 2011

Five important points of Virtual Lab networking in Veeam Backup and Replication v5

Posted by in backup |


Last week, I presented a webinar titled, 5 New ways to use vPower. The objective of this webinar was to explain how the SureBackup functionality with vPower can bring a few more options to the VMware vSphere administrator. While I was focusing on SureBackup, a few questions were raised related to the networking capabilities of the Virtual Lab functionality. In the Users Guide, this diagram explains the Virtual Lab well:

clip_image002

However, there are still questions that may arise for each of the virtual machines behind the proxy appliance (located at the top end of the diagram). Here are five facts about these machines behind the proxy appliance:

1. The SureBackup virtual machines cannot pass through the Proxy Appliance to the production network. The VMs that reside in the isolated network are on a vSwitch that is only accessible to the proxy appliance. There is no route from this network out other networks.
With this safeguard, the isolated network virtual machines have the same IP addresses as the production virtual machines. This is the fundamental way that the virtual machines can start as expected while not interfering with the production instances within the isolated network.

2. The Virtual Lab proxy appliance is created from the wizard. When the Virtual Lab wizard creates the networking configuration for the proxy appliance, the virtual machine that performs the proxy appliance role is created with the input from the wizard. The proxy appliance is created from the contents of the C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\LiveCD folder in default installations. Each proxy appliance will have individual network configuration from the Virtual Lab wizard , which creates a floppy image to provide the proxy appliance its configuration. The virtual floppy image also is where logs are written. The floppy image file is stored as config.flp file in proxy appliance folder on selected datastore.

3. The vSwitch has no physical adapters assigned. If you look in the network inventory of the host, you may notice that there are no vmnic interfaces assigned to it. The figure below shows an example vSwitch for a Virtual Lab:
clip_image004

This is, by design, to keep the virtual machines in the Virtual Lab isolated. The SureBackup proxy appliance does have a connection on a production network vSwitch, but its configuration prohibits pass-through from the isolated to production networks. Inbound traffic is permitted through the access IP, if configured, within the Virtual Lab wizard.

4. The vSwitch is located only on one host. During the Virtual Lab wizard, the selected host is the only one that receives the vSwitch for the SureBackup Virtual Lab. In this way, the Virtual Lab is contained to this host and will not move around should a vSphere feature such as vMotion be configured.

5. Distributed Virtual Switches (DVS) are supported with Veeam Backup and Replication 5.0.1. Using a DVS on the ESX host is now supported for the Virtual Lab. Further hosts that are part of DRS clusters are also supported with version 5.0.1.

The Virtual Lab is an incredibly useful tool, yet the networking configuration should be fully understood before proceeding. If you haven’t checked out the User Guide, it’s the authoritative resource for these feature. Some lab time to go through the drill with vPower is also a good idea to be fully comfortable.

How do you use the Virtual Lab within Veeam Backup and Replication v5? Share your comments below.

Jan 11th 2011

Veeam selected as a winner of Virtualization Review Reader’s Choice Awards

Posted by in Awards |


What an honor for Veeam! We were selected in this year’s Reader’s Choice Awards by Virtualization Review. The news crossed the wire today via our press release, and this is a big deal for Veeam.

In the Reader’s Choice Awards, Veeam Backup and Replication v5 was selected as the winner of the Virtual Business Continuity category and the Veeam ONE Solution for VMware received the Merit Award in the Virtual Management & Optimization category.

This week, the Americas Veeam team is gathered in Atlanta for the annual kickoff for 2011; and this is great news for us to celebrate together. While we are logistically hampered by strong winter weather in the Southeast, this is a bright spot and a big deal for the Veeam team.

The Reader’s Choice Awards are available online at Virtualization Review (registration required) and are also figured in this month’s print issue of Virtualization Review magazine. Be sure to check out Veeam in the Reader's Choice Awards. Thank you virtualization community!

Jan 7th 2011

Powered-off VMs? Veeam Backup and Replication does that too.

Posted by in Bloggers |


While it may seem trivial, there are a number of use cases for running a backup on a powered off virtual machine. This can be to increase the automation levels with VMware features such as Distributed Power Management (DPM), a subset of the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) of vSphere. DPM will power down under-utilized ESX(i) servers and consolidate the workload to the remaining hosts of the DRS cluster.

While DPM does a good job of managing hosts during periods of low activity within a cluster, it doesn’t do much for virtual machines. There can be plenty of situations where virtual machines could be subject to being powered off during out-of-service hours. Shutting down Windows Servers automatically is easy enough with centralized scripts using PowerShell, shutdown.exe or even a local scheduled task. The revival task to power on the virtual machine is also an easy one-liner that can be easily automated with the Start-VM PowerCLI command, as shown below:

clip_image002

If a number of virtual machines are permitted to be powered off, the use case for DPM becomes more attractive. While idle virtual machines will release memory back to the host via VMware’s memory management techniques, the ultimate resource giveback is a powered off state. To be fair, when the virtual machine is powered back on, DRS and some of the memory management techniques may take time to re-arrange all of the newly added resources to the cluster.

Regardless of the reason a virtual machine is powered off, Veeam Backup and Replication can still protect the virtual machine in this state. In fact, the snapshot burden that the virtual machine, host and storage systems undergo is lessened by the fact that the redo-log files have effectively nothing to write to the source VMDK. While the virtual machine is powered off, features such as VMware’s Changed Block Tracking of each VMDK are still utilized during the backup job for optimal performance. Further, all of Veeam's restore and vPower features are available for the powered off virtual machine.

There are two important notes for backup up powered-off virtual machines, the first is that application-aware processing does not occur on a powered-off VMs and the second is that this is not a good use case for a domain controller. See this earlier blog post about what may happen for a domain controller.

As a side note, if multiple backups are run on the virtual machine while it is powered off; the subsequent backups (when using incremental mode) will be a small container only of headers because nothing has changed. In regards to excluding powered off virtual machines from a backup job, this was raised in a forum discussion and the current product only allows exclusion of templates from the backup job.

Most agent-based backup tools can't back up powered-off virtual machines. This may be an obstacle for taking DPM to the next level and setting up automated shutdown and power up operations for virtual machines, yet ensuring they are backed up. Do you perform automatic shutdown operations of virtual machines during out of service hours? Would you if you could back them up? If so, explain your environment below.

« Older Entries
Share


Products

Resources