If you thought we would run out of awesome ideas for our solution, think again. We’re announcing the 7th feature in our Countdown to v7 today: Virtual Labs for Replicas (currently for VMware only).
Our customers and partners have long been asking us to add “SureReplica” functionality - in other words, enable the SureBackup capability for replicas and not just for backups. However, we at Veeam saw a lot more potential for also using replicas to take advantage of resources that are currently being wasted. In v7, we’re taking the SureReplica feature request beyond automated replica verification to provide you with the full range of functionality you’re already leveraging with Veeam backups.
So, the subtitle for this blog post should be: Put Your Replicas to Work! Most of the DR sites out there are idle, waiting for a major disaster to strike. Instead of gathering dust while waiting for the worst to happen, Veeam is offering you a way to actually give those resources value beyond disaster recovery. This time we’re going further. Now we’re bringing all the powerful capabilities of Virtual Labs for backup (SureBackup, U-AIR, On-Demand-Sandbox) to your replicas too.
First of all I should update you on how Virtual Labs for Veeam Backup & Replication actually works today in a VMware vSphere environment:
A dedicated host for the job is assigned.
A Standard vSwitch is created on that host.
A Proxy Appliance (routing engine) gets connected to that vSwitch and to the subnet of the Backup Server, copying the production network at the backend.
The requested virtual machines are brought online from within your backup files using vPower technology.
Our customers love Veeam Backup & Replication! We get all kinds of positive comments about how easy it is to set up, configure, and operate. We hear about how powerful it is in backup and recovery operations. All of this goodness comes at a very affordable price point.
Powerful, Easy-to-Use, and Affordable. That’s Veeam!
Modern Architecture Wins Every Time: Veeam Customers Unaffected
Last week Symantec scaring all VMware customers about backups on vSphere 5.1. In this post they made insinuations that backup vendors claiming support for vSphere 5.1 were misleading their customers and putting them into unsafe recoverability conditions. While we’d like to think that Symantec did this as a service to their customers, we believe this is just another example of a Symantec trying to use scare tactics against their biggest competitor, Veeam. We believe this creative FUD was created just to explain why Symantec still does not support the latest vSphere release – unlike Veeam which does support it.
Symantec went on a campaign to scare people from using Veeam and more importantly to scare them from upgrading to vSphere 5.1. Here’s a sent out from the official Backup Exec account using the #Recoverynightmare tag:
With todays great hypervisor management tools and the paradigm shift from Client/Server to Cloud networking the old need to backup “Host” servers has really gone away.
A couple of years ago it became readily apparent that the Client/Server networking model had outlived its usable lifespan and needed to be updated to something better. The .” Broad Network Access, Rapid Elasticity, Resource Pools, On Demand Self Service, and Measured Service are the 5 critical components. This is the new model that will be used going forward for networking. .
Virtualization is the gateway technology to the Cloud. Whether that cloud is Private, Public, or some Hybrid of the two there is little question that virtualization is the method driving the move from the old way, Client/Server, to the new way, Cloud!
Today at Veeam announced that customers around the world who use System Center 2012 will receive 10 free licenses for Veeam Management Pack ™ (MP)!.
If you run VMware virtual machines and monitor your network with System Center you will want the Veeam MP. This great tool integrates with System Center Operations Manager to let you monitor and better manage your VMware environment using your existing System Center infrastructure. The detailed information gathering is incredibly valuable, and the extensible management functions make the Veeam MP a must have.
New MP customers using System Center 2012 can register for a free perpetual 10-socket license that includes one full year of maintenance and support. Register to get FREE Microsoft System Center 2012 Management Pack 10-Pack license key.
Every year around this time companies all over the world report their earnings. Here at Veeam we're no different, we issue a press release stating how we performed the previous year. 2011 was yet another GREAT year for us in terms of growth, we continue to grow at over 100% per year for the past 5 years. We owe our continued success to our ever growing ProPartner Community as well as to all of our great customers who continue to choose the #1 backup product for virtualization. Below is a letter from our president and CEO, Ratmir Timashev, that he has been sending out as a recap of 2011.
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Recently in an internal discussion and lurking through the Veeam Forums, the VMXNET3 virtual adapter came up in regards to its behavior when a MAC change occurs. The VMXNET3 adapter is one of the new paravirtualized devices that are part of the vSphere compliment of technologies.
The behavior in question is that when a Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7 virtual machine is cloned or otherwise incurs a change to the MAC address; the virtual machine will re-enumerate the Ethernet interface. This also happens when using Veeam Backup and Replication’s SureBackup functionality. While I’ve historically been a fan of the VMXNET3 interface, everyone should be aware of this behavior. There are limitations with VMXNET3, such as it not being supported for use in the VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) virtual machine configuration for all versions of vSphere.
The re-enumeration of the Ethernet interface will make it appear still as a VMXNET3 interface, but in the operating system; it will become the next in sequence. For a virtual machine that is created with the default option of selecting an automatically assigned MAC address, the network interface will show up as shown in the figure below if the MAC address changes:
This is all too familiar as many virtualization professionals had this happen when performing physical to virtual conversions, as well as the upgrade that we may have performed going to VMXNET3 from a previous adapter type. Because of this behavior of the adapter, VMware has published this recommending the use of the E1000 adapter type for templates using Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7. If the virtual machine has a custom-defined MAC address, most of these issues do not occur; but this isn’t really a practical solution.
This is just the case when a virtual machine that is launched within SureBackup has an automatically configured MAC address, the virtual machine may not respond correctly to this new environment. The primary observation in most situations is that the guest virtual machine will enumerate the additional network interface (as shown above) and it will not retain any of the networking configuration options that were part of the source virtual machine. This means that the interface will boot up requesting a DHCP address and not have the static IP address configuration that was previously assigned. This doesn’t apply to the other virtual network adapter types (such as E1000 or VMXNET2) or other operating systems such as Windows Server 2003.
For the same virtual machine that was shown above, it receives a new MAC address in the automatic configuration. This is due to how the VMXNET3 interface enumerates itself in Windows. The VMXNET3 device shows its enumeration in the Windows Device Manager as shown below:
This corresponds to its location in the NetworkCards hive of the registry. Basically, each time a new network card interface is enumerated in the operating system; they are displayed here as well. Here is where these IDs are enumerated in the registry:
While all of this is the rather standard experience that we have gone through in cloning a virtual machine or related tasks, it can impact the SureBackup feature of Veeam Backup and Replication 5. In this forum thread, a Veeam user highlighted a situation where using VMXNET3 can impact the SureBackup functionality. Anton Gostev, a product manager at Veeam, points out that the 5.0.1 release of Veeam Backup and Replication will have a workaround.
Update: Version 5.0.1 has been released. Be sure to update previous versions to the latest release.
It is now December and there are just a few weeks left of these 2 promotions. We thought you may be interested in taking advantage of this opportunity before the offers end on December 24.
Since the release of Veeam Backup & Replication v5 in October, we have gotten great reviews and invaluable feedback. You can read Eric Siebert’s review of Veeam Backup & Replication v5 that was posted on or see the in-depth review posted on .
As you probably already know, Veeam Backup & Replication has features that are not available in any other existing products on the market:
Instant VM Recovery: Restore entire virtual machines from a backup file in minutes.
U-AIR(Universal Application-Item Recovery): Recover individual items from any virtualized application, on any OS.
SureBackup Recovery Verification: Automatically verify the recoverability of EVERY backup, EVERY VM, EVERY time.
On-Demand Sandbox: Create test VMs from any point in time to troubleshoot problems or test workarounds, software patches or new application code.
Instant File-Level Recovery: Recover an entire VM or an individual file from the same image-level backup in any OS or file system.
With this promotion you can get 25% off Veeam Backup & Replication v5 when you provide a proof of license for a competing product. This is a limited time offer that will end soon. If you are not satisfied with your existing backup solution, give Veeam Backup & Replication v5 a try.
The second promotion that will end right before Christmas is on Veeam Essentials Plus. You can save 42% by getting a free upgrade to Veeam Essentials Plus when buying Veeam Essentials.
We are very glad to be a part of the campaign with VMware. VMware Essentials Plus and Veeam Essentials Plus will give SMB’s the ability to manage and protect their virtual infrastructure at an affordable price.
Veeam Essentials Plus includes Veeam Backup & Replication v5 Enterprise Edition (features listed above), the industry standard for VMware monitoring in Veeam Monitor 5.0, Veeam Reporter, Veeam FastSCP and Veeam Business View.
Learn more about this VMware and Veeam promotion.
Take advantage of these two great promotions before they are gone.
An interesting article from came into my inbox yesterday titled “” While Veeam is a client of Storage Switzerland as noted in the article, what impressed me about this article was how the author, , was able to sum up very nicely some of the things we’ve already been saying. Many of you may remember a previous blog post, “Will Dinosaurs Survive? (Response to: Will Dedicated VMware Protection Solutions go the way of CDP?)”, which was itself an answer to some bloggers calling virtualization focused backup vendors niche players.
One of the points I liked about the Storage Switzerland article was the entire history aspect of backup vendors…
In almost every case, when a new operating system or platform became dominant, a new data protection leader emerged. Novell NetWare begat Cheyenne Software, but as UNIX and Microsoft Windows NT emerged, this NetWare solution couldn’t make the transition to the new platforms. UNIX backup drove the establishment of Legato NetWorker (eventually EMC NetWorker) and Openvision NetBackup (eventually Symantec NetBackup). Microsoft Windows NT drove the establishment of Arcadia Backup Exec (eventually Symantec Backup Exec). Even CommVault, one of the more successful newer backup applications, was driven by the establishment of Windows as an enterprise, mission-critical operating system. In short, each new operating system or platform eventually brought a new data protection application.
This truly does show that it’s a great time to be a vendor focusing on the VMwareplatform (and virtualization in general). Expect more great things from Veeam as we continue to innovate on these virtualization platforms.
Today Veeam hosted a webinar titled “Running Exchange on VMware”. Most of the focus of course was on backup and recovery of Exchange once it’s been virtualized. As I was preparing for the webinar (with a lot of help from ) I realized that the information would also make a good blog post. Below are the main points of backup and recovery for Microsoft Exchange and how Veeam Backup & Replication v5 addresses them.
From the Microsoft perspective, there are :
In order to be compliant with Exchange Server, VSS based backup applications must follow three basic requirements to ensure the integrity and recoverability of shadow copy backups. If these requirements are not followed, Microsoft ... will not be able to troubleshoot backup and restore issues.
Rule 1: Exchange must be backed up exclusively through the Exchange VSS Writer.
Rule 2: Backup should not be relied on until the backup application has completed integrity verification.
Rule 3: Restores to original location must be done exclusively with the Exchange VSS Writer.
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