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.
As you have noticed, Veeam is anouncing Veeam Backup & Replication v7 features one at a time at the go.veeam.com/v7 page. We already announced , a vCenter Web Client Plugin and the Veeam Explorer for Sharepoint. Today it is my honor to tell you that Veeam is bringing all the features of Veeam Virtual Labs to Hyper-V. I will explain all major features in just a minute but first I need to explain where all this features are based on.
It’s called vPower:
vPower is a Veeam technology that enables you to power up a VM from within a deduplicated and compressed backup file. This means that your VM is already back online before you started restoring the actual data to the production environment. Because the machine is already running, the RTO is minimal (minutes). Of course you need to take in mind that you are running on backup storage so you will need to migrate the VM to the production storage. This is done with the allocation to the VHD or VHDX file being pointed to the backup file (where the backed up VHD and VHDX files are stored). Let me show you with a picture how that looks like:
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.
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Back in October, Carl-Fredrik (@Cape200) sent the following Tweet:
VEEAM should really give every VMware VCP a full copy of their complete catalog! If I had gotten that I would have made them some money! via
This got us thinking, should we do this? I talked to a few people, including who has a popular blog called and . They agreed that this would be a great idea for the community.
After discussing the idea internally we got the ball rolling, everyone agreed it was a great idea. Of course it’s taken us some time to get the announcement out there, one of the reasons is that we wanted to wait until we released Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0.1 since it fixed several minor issues. With 5.0.1 released and the on the horizon, we decided to go ahead and make this our 2010 Holiday gift.
From our official press release:
Veeam Software, innovative provider of VMware data protection, disaster recovery and VMware management solutions for virtual datacenter environments, today announced that Veeam Backup & Replication™ v5 with vPower™ is now available free to all VMware vExperts, VMware Certified Professionals, and VMware Certified Instructors. Any vExpert, VCP or VCI can receive a free two-socket software license (valued at approximately $1,800) for non-production use, including training, evaluation and development.
Ready for your NFR key? Simply visit this link and register and you’ll be on your way to trying out the best products for managing and protecting VMware infrastructures.
Update: Maish has blogged about the holiday give on his Technodrone blog:
Veeam released the new Backup & Replication v5 in October. The release date was marked by a Live Launch event webinar on October 20 that drew in almost 1500 attendees. The feedback that we have gotten so far has been outstanding and will provide us with the information we need to continue to improve.
As we have stated before, no other product possesses the capabilities that are available in Veeam Backup & Replication v5 with vPower. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago we found a dissatisfied Symantec customer who claimed that Veeam Backup & Replication v5 could do for him what Symantec couldn’t. We couldn’t resist and offered him the chance to try Veeam Backup & Replication. All we can say for now is so far so good!
In addition to being agentless, Veeam Backup & Replication v5 provides numerous advantages over legacy solutions such as Symantec Backup Exec, and has capabilities that Backup Exec is missing:
Backup Exec lacks instant VM recovery and therefore cannot eliminate the need to extract the backup and copy it to production storage when recovering an entire VM.
Backup Exec (agentless) lacks granular application-item recovery so it cannot provide a way out when a user accidently deletes important emails.
Backup Exec does not provide instant file-level recovery from an image-level backup, to any point in time, on any OS and file system, in seconds.
Backup Exec does not have the power to verify the recoverability of its backups.
Backup Exec does not offer image-based replication and as a result it is not able to offer affordable near-CDP.
Backup Exec DOES charge extra for deduplication, which seems to be an essential capability for any backup tool, seeing as how data volume is growing every day.
Multiple backups are needed for different recovery scenarios with Backup Exec, whereas Veeam only needs one.
We recently looked at a price comparison of Veeam Backup & Replication v5 with Symantec Backup Exec 2010 and were shocked at the results. Besides not providing all the functionality, Symantec Backup Exec can cost upwards of 4 times more and still has 5 times less functionality than Veeam Backup & Replication v5.
*EMEA MSRP for the following configuration: 4 dual-socket ESXi servers connected to a SAN and hosting 1 Oracle server, 2 Microsoft Exchange servers, 4 Active Directory domain controllers, 2 SQL Server VMs, and 2 SharePoint Portal Server VMs.
Want more proof? You can read a to get a detailed look into Veeam Backup & Replication v5 with vPower and until December 24, you can switch from Symantec Backup Exec to Veeam Backup & Replication v5 and get a 25% discount.
Are you satisfied with your current backup solution? Are you willing to pay over 4 times more for 5 times less functionality?
RyanW, if you are reading this then please know that we are out there looking for you! Just a couple of weeks ago on October 21 you told Symantec on their Backup Exec forum that you were having problems with your current Backup Exec solution () and that you were a little frustrated. You also wrote on their forum:
“Anyone? If this is the way the Agent for VMware is, I need to find a way to get a refund and remove my license. I'll pick up VEEAM V5 which does all of this without an agent on the servers and has granular restore capabilities without buying additional agents (such as the SQL and Active Directory agent). That's just ridiculous!”
So where are you RyanW?
We are looking for you!
We want to find you and give you a chance to switch to Veeam v5! In fact, we want to give you "Veeam Backup & Replication v5 with vPower" as a gift – yes, for FREE - just because of who you are, the very RyanW who told Symantec how it is and what Veeam v5 with vPower is all about. Thank you for thinking of us! And thank you for spreading the good word that v5 is a great product!
RyanW, if you see this, please email us at RyanW@veeam.com and we would be excited to meet you! We hope to find you soon!
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.
Today we publicly announced our very successful Q3 when we experienced extraordinary growth. Our total revenue bookings grew 88% in Q3 of this year when compared to Q3 in 2009 and new license revenue bookings increased 73%. Additionally we added 2100 new customers bringing the grand total to more than 15,000 customers worldwide. Veeam also hired 47 new employees, bringing our total number of employees to 301 worldwide.
Four Awards at VMworld 2010 That We Won in Q3
In Q3 we were fortunate to win “Best of Show 2010” award at the VMworld conference in San Francisco and we were the 1st company in history to win 4 “Best of VMworld” awards. We received the Best of Show for Veeam Backup & Replication™ v5 (what we call "v5") which judges called a “.” We also won Gold for New Technology with vPower, the breakthrough technology behind v5. For the 2nd consecutive year, Veeam was a finalist in the Virtualization Management category with Veeam ONE and a finalist in the Business Continuity and Data Protection category with Veeam Backup & Replication.
NEW Products in Q3
Veeam Backup & Replication v5 with vPower - at the end of August we demonstrated our new "v5" and vPower technology at VMworld San Francisco. This technology powers Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 and overcomes the limitations of traditional data protection and disaster recovery software by running a VM directly from a backup file. vPower also enables these features that are innovative in the industry and which no other companies have in their products:
Instant VM Recovery: restores an entire virtual machine from a backup file in minutes and users remain productive while IT troubleshoots the issue.
U-AIR(Universal Application-Item Recovery): recovers individual items from any virtualized application, on any OS, without additional backups, agents or software tools. It eliminates the need for expensive special-purpose tools and extends granular recovery to all applications and users.
SureBackupRecovery Verification: Automatically verifies the recoverability of every backup and of every virtual machine. This features eliminates uncertainty and sets a new standard in data protection.
On-Demand Sandbox: Create test VMs from any point in time to troubleshoot problems or test workarounds, software patches or new application code. Eliminates the need for dedicated test labs and the overhead that extra VMware snapshots place on VMs.
Instant File-Level Recovery for any OS or file system: Recover an entire VM or an individual file from the same image-level backup. Extends instant file-level recovery to all VMs.
Our CEO, Ratmir Timashev, was quoted saying that v5 with vPower has taken VMware backup to a new level and it not only provides much better service at a much lower cost, it also offers compelling reasons to virtualize critical enterprise applications, including CRM, ERP and email systems which includes databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server and email systems such as Microsoft Exchange.
Free Edition of the Veeam Reporter - at the time of our highly anticipated "v5" release, Veeam also announced in August our new free version of the popular Veeam Reporter for VMware. Veeam Reporter allows VMware administrators to perform capacity planning, change management, and enterprise reporting and chargeback.
Veeam ONE - finally, in Q3, the company introduced Veeam ONE which is a comprehensive solution for managing the performance, configuration and utilization of VMware environments. It includes Monitoring, Capacity Planning, Change Management as well as Reporting and Chargeback. It is the only single solution that takes into account varying customer requirements and scenarios. The Veeam nworks Management Pack Plus and the Veeam nworks Smart Plug-in Plus are for companies using Microsoft System Center or the HP Operations Manager, respectively. These Veeam ONE offerings leverage and extend the management frameworks in which customers have already invested. is used in other monitoring environments.
For all these achievements and successes in Q3, we are sincerely grateful to our customers, partners and the VMware community!
Today we are going to kick off our highly anticipated Live Launch for "v5"! Our CEO Ratmir Timashev will be making this announcement with Doug Hazelman (). Ratmir already sent personal invitations to a number of our Veeam friends or our extended Veeam family in the VMware community because he wanted to be sure that they will join him personally at this very special Live event.
So today will be one of those special moments in our history. We have been working tirelessly on Veeam Backup and Replication v5 with vPower which is truly a breakthrough, innovative technology! And we genuinely believe that this is the start of something new in the backup and data protection industry.
During our 20 minute announcement, Ratmir and Doug will share some of our inside stories that we have never shared outside the company in the past. You will hear about the "change of plans" that happened in October 2009 when our visionary CTO and R&D team paused the development of what was to be v5 originally and instead came up with this breakthrough technology that you will be able to download and try today for the first time (right after our Live Launch event!). We will also tell you how this was a "top secret" for many months when nobody outside of R&D knew about the special project and how we found out about it internally. And Doug will have you convinced during the Live Launch that this is just a start – the release of v5 with vPower tomorrow is only beginning of what is possible next… Tune in and be part of backup history!
There've been some interesting blog posts lately about dedicated VMware data protection solutions such as Veeam Backup & Replication and whether those solutions will continue to thrive. started the discussion in his blog post "" This post caught the attention of Mr. Backup, , and he posted a response "", and then Jay posted a response to Mr. Preston "". All of this responding created yet another response by own "". With all of this talk about us, we figured we'd throw our own response into the fray.
All 4 blog posts make very valid points. The purpose of this post is not to call into question any of those points but to explain Veeam's position in the dedicated VMware data protection space. In fact, I wrote an article for Virtualization Review a few months back . The backup and DR space was very different in the age of the mainframe…then came Windows…now comes virtualization.
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