The screen shots below were created with a pre-release build of Veeam Backup & Replication v5 featuring vPower, many dialog boxes and text will change with the final release of Veeam Backup & Replication v5.

Another new feature in Veeam Backup & Replication v5 is the ability to create a catalog (or index) of the files contained within the Windows image backup. Cataloging is only available for Windows file systems with version 5 but we do have plans to extend this to other file systems as well as applications in future releases.

Indexing is now an option that appears on the VSS “Backup Consistency” screen on backup jobs. Creating the file system catalog is extremely fast and it is stored with the backup image. The full text indexing is actually handled by utilizing Microsoft Search Server so it does not affect the backup window when selecting the option to build the guest file index.

Once the backup is complete, the catalog file is passed off to the Microsoft Search Server. Simply connect Veeam’s Enterprise Manager to the Search Server through the configuration settings and you can now search across all Veeam Backups for any file on your Windows VM’s. Since Enterprise Manager supports multiple Veeam Backup & Replication Servers, you can search for files no matter what server was used to back them up.

The default search option is to only look at the most recent backups. This can easily be changed by utilizing the Advance Search feature.

Select a time period to search through all backups created during that period:

The search results are now very different as you see the results for all backups.

Clicking the link for the file brings up a window that tells you exactly where that version of the file is. You can print this information as well

Now that you know what version of the file you want to recover, simply run the Recovery Wizard for Windows Guest Files and choose the proper backup to recover from

With version 5 we’ve also included a “reason” box for all restore activities, this helps to track why a particular restore has been done.

Once you’ve completed the wizard, simply browse to the location of the file and recover it.

Another option for finding files that does not require Microsoft Search Server is to utilize the “Browse” functionality on the Files tab in Enterprise Manager. The browse feature displays the catalog of files for the chosen VM and restore point:

The following screen shots are taken from an early “Alpha” build of Veeam Backup & Replication v5 featuring our patent pending vPower technology. While the functionality is there, some of the dialog boxes and text will change before the official release of Veeam Backup & Replication v5. The screen shots and wizards are very self-explanatory, I have provided additional text where needed.

SureBackup: Recovery Verification

This is just a quick preview of Recovery Verification, you can check out a more in-depth video preview for more information.

Step 1, Create an application Group and set options

Create a verification job using the application group. This can be scheduled to run or run manually:

Real-Time statistics of the Verification Job

U-AIR: Active Directory Restore Wizard

Create an AD restore lab request

Once the request is created, the work-flow engine starts. Lab requests can either be approved or denied.

Approving the Lab Request

With Veeam’s Advanced VSS integration, when the domain controller starts in the virtual lab, it is first started in “Safe Mode” for directory services restore, and then automatically rebooted into normal mode. This is done to ensure the consistency of Active Directory when recovering from a VSS aware snapshot.

As the lab is starting, the administrator can track progress and will be notified once the lab is ready.

The AD restore wizard connects to both the production domain controller as well as the domain controller in the virtual lab.

In this example there are no differences between what’s in the backup and what’s in production for the selected user:

InstantRecovery: Instant VM Recovery

The process of Instant VM Recovery is wizard driven and takes just a few minutes to complete. Once finished, the VM is live on the production network but running from the Veeam Backup Server’s datastore. You can easily Storage vMotion the VM to a production datastore or use Veeam Backup & Replication to replicate the VM to a production datastore.

For more information about Veeam Reporter Free Edition, click here

What: Shameless promotion to drive downloads for the new FREE product for VMware: Veeam Reporter Free Edition and also do some good at the same time via charitable donations

How: Bloggers who participate each get a special download link that tracks how many unique downloads each blogger sends.

Details:

We will be registering bloggers for the contest starting today. Once registered, we will send each blogger a link to download the release candidate of Veeam Reporter Free Edition. The obvious intention here is that bloggers blog about it and talk about the new free tool.

The contest officially begins on the day we release Veeam Reporter Free Edition. At that time we send each blogger their unique link for them to promote. This link will go to Veeam’s site and allow people to register (if not already registered) and download Veeam Reporter Free Edition. Bloggers are allowed to use any means (within reason, see note below) they want to distribute the link including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. We also encourage bloggers to mention to their readers that there’s a charitable donation involved if they should win.

NOTE: bloggers are NOT allowed to employ an army of teenagers to drive downloads, we will be checking the authenticity of downloads and if anything appears abnormal we will disqualify the blogger. This includes but is not limited to: hiring an outside firm to drive downloads, hacking social networking sites or any method that would be considered “not normal” by the officials at Veeam. Veeam does not allow the use of “public” email domains for registrations and downloads.

The blogger who drives the most unique downloads for Veeam Reporter Free Edition between the start date and Monday, August 30^th 11:59 PM EDT will receive the grand prize. We will be announcing the winner at Veeam’s VMworld US party. While this is a party you won’t want to miss if you’re at VMworld, you do NOT need to be present to win.

Veeam will promote all participating blogs on our official landing page for Veeam Reporter Free Edition as well as in an official corporate blog post at http://www.Veeam.com/blog.

Prizes:

This has been the most difficult part to determine. We thought about giving cash or technology but in the end we decided that it would be best to give the prize money to charity. We even conducted an informal poll of the bloggers who expressed early interest in participating and I think one respondent summed it up best:

My vote is for something donated to charity.  It’s in the spirit of the contest – we’re helping Veeam out, Veeam is helping us out (promoting our blogs), so we should help out others who are in need.  I don’t think we all need MacBooks or cash when there are others in the world who need those things a lot more than we do.

We were also inspired by one of the Seattle Tech Field day participants, Kevin Houston, and his Plea to VMworld attendees.

After some careful consideration we determined that if Veeam picked the charity it wouldn’t mean as much to the bloggers, that is why we have decided to go with Charity Choice, this allows each blogger to choose the charity of their choice from a list of over 100 charities. Here’s the breakdown (in the interest of full disclosure and transparency):

• The first 15 bloggers to register and participate will each receive a $25 charity gift card
• The Grand prize will go to the blogger who generates the most downloads: $1,000 charity gift card
• The honorable mention prize (to be determined by Veeam): $250 charity gift card

Of course we encourage each blogger to mention their charity of choice in their posts.

Are you an interested blogger? Click HERE TO REGISTER

The move was necessary for several reasons, most of which have to do with the fact that Veeam recognizes the value of blogging and rather than starting from scratch we decided to move VeeamMeUp. We’ve imported all of the content over and have redirected the traffic from VeeamMeUp to this new address so (hopefully) any incoming links will be preserved as well as any internal links. Of course with any migration there’s always the chance for an issue so if you notice something, please comment or let me know at VMDoug at Veeam dot com.

I will still be providing much of the content as VMDoug but you’ll also see some other contributors here as well. Our goal is to open up the blog to the smart people we have here at Veeam so that they can contribute as well. Who knows, we might even see a post or two from Ratmir.

For now, here’s a quick list of what’s been going on the past month…

• Veeam announced as Finalist for Microsoft Partner of the Year
• Veeam announces support for vSphere 4.1 and Monitor 5.0 Beta
• Veeam participates in Tech Field Day 3 in Seattle
• Veeam announces “Christmas in August” and Free Reporter
• Veeam announces record second quarter results for 2010

-doug

SureBackup is coming in Q3…are you ready? Click the link and register to stay informed!

OK, maybe that wasn’t so difficult after all.

If you’re going to be in New Orleans June 7-10, please stop by the Veeam booth and learn all about how you can manage VMware with Microsoft System Center. We’re going to have a good size booth and plenty of engineers on hand to demo our Veeam nworks Management Pack 5.5, including our new PRO Pack for SCVMM that we announced back at the Microsoft Management Summit.

Besides product demos we’re also going to be giving away “Got VMware” t-shirts and we’ll also have raffle drawings during the show where we’re giving away a free copy of Train Signal’s System Center Operations Manager Training. We’d like to thank our friends at Train Signal for working with us on this raffle. The drawing times for the raffle are below, make sure you’re at the Veeam booth for your chance to win.

• Monday 8 p.m.
• Tuesday 4:30
• Wednesday 4:30
• Thursday 2:45

The Veeam Team looks forward to seeing everyone in New Orleans!

Recently you may have seen a blog post created by Kelly Polanski, from Wave Break, and Jason Mattox from Vizioncore. In this blog post they say a number of things about Veeam as a company as well as about our Veeam Backup & Replication product. With the Vizioncore brand going away soon, we can only guess that this is a last ditch effort by Vizioncore marketing to try and convince customers to choose Vizioncore over Veeam. While we’re not going to address every point in the blog post, we do want to make sure our customers and ProPartners can feel confident with their chosen solution of Veeam Backup & Replication.

The intro is provided by Kelly Polanski who works for Wavelength, a marketing agency that Vizioncore has hired to help them with their social media. Wavelength is also affiliated with DCIG, a company that is known to be a “pay for play” blogger service and we assume the only place Vizioncore could turn to for something positive about their product . We’re also aware that Vizioncore is using this paid analyst briefing in their training to partners.

If you have followed Veeam’s announcements over the past several quarters then you know that Veeam is a financially strong and growing company. Our results from the first quarter of 2010 were announced several weeks ago and point to our continued success. Veeam is also an international company with offices across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific and 24×7 support worldwide. It is through our strong ProPartners that Veeam has been able to see such tremendous growth, a fact pointed out by CRN in a recent article. We’ve chosen not to name names previous to this, but the fact is that many of these partners came to Veeam because of their dissatisfaction with Vizioncore.

If you have any questions regarding the technical points of Jason Mattox’s blog post, please feel free to reach out to your local Veeam Team and schedule a time to discuss your questions with them or email me VMDoug<at>Veeam<dot>com. If you know Veeam and you’ve tried Veeam Backup & Replication then we’re sure you’ll see that most of Jason’s points were simply a desperate plea to try and spread rumors and make their product look better. Don’t believe Jason or us, put Veeam Backup & Replication in the lab and decide for yourself why Veeam is the #1 solution for VMware Backup and Disaster Recovery as chosen by SearchServerVirtualization.

Interestingly, more and more customers and partners are choosing Veeam. In 2009 Veeam added over 8,000 new customers while Vizioncore added less than 4,000* – that is two times more customers choosing Veeam! In Q1 of 2010 Veeam added 1,400 new customers while Vizioncore added less than 600* – that’s more than two times more customers choosing Veeam. The graphic representation of this is below:

*These estimates are based on Vizioncore marketing materials.

But of course don’t just take our word for it; here is what our customers and partners have to say about Veeam:

• INSANE BACKUP SPEED – Customer Feedback on Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0
• Worldwide Engineering Firm Increases Backup Speed by 93 Percent and Reduces Backup Monitoring Time to Zero
• File-Level Recovery Speed Improves Dramatically for School District
• HAMA, Specialist of Multimedia Accessories, Relies on Veeam Backup & Replication for Ongoing Virtualization Plans
• Veeam Backup & Replication™ to Become Tyco Electronics’ EMEA Standard
• More case studies

Another interesting trend is what Google shows in the terms of interest in our brand. As you can see, Veeam continues to rise while Vizioncore continues to fall. Desperate? Maybe…

How Veeam is trending

Changed Block Tracking

Veeam has supported CBT for over 8 months starting with our 4.0 release back in October of 2009. With the first anniversary of vSphere behind us, we’re glad to see some of the last vendors finally catching up and utilizing this technology. There’s also been some discussion online recently about possible issues with CBT, rest assured that Veeam has you covered and in over 8 months of CBT support, none of our customers has run into this issue. For more information on this, please check out this thread in our forums that also includes information on obtaining a fix if you feel you’re exposed to this issue.

Object-Level Restore

Most of you have heard by now of Veeam’s plans around Veeam Backup & Replication version 5 that includes the technology known as SureBackup. One of the things that makes me so excited about the new capabilities is that we’re going to be able to offer Universal Application Item-level Recovery – we’re not just talking about Exchange or files, but any data from any application without an additional charge for each application. Other vendors are promising object-level restore but only for Exchange and only if you purchase an additional and very expensive software tool (per mailbox) from their parent company. And yes, they’ve been promising this for years.

Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS)

While other vendors try to make it seem like they’re the “thought leaders” when it comes to VSS, the truth is that Veeam has been leading the way in VSS for VMware backups for almost 2 years now. We knew early on that the only way to ensure proper VSS support was to write our own implementation and not rely on VMware to provide it for us.  Additionally, with our VSS implementation everything is done at run time, no need to deploy and maintain a VSS agent executable on every Windows VM. Their implementation:

This driver is implemented as an .exe file which can be added to Windows 2003 and 2008 guests.

You can check out any of these previous posts on VSS if you want to know who the real thought leader is when it comes to VSS support on VMware:

Veeam Backup 2.0

Is your backup really VSS aware?

VSS and VMware ESX: What your VMware backup vendor isn’t telling you

The Great VSS Debate

Active Block What?

Now we’ve heard about this new technology that one of our competitors claims greatly improves the speed of backups. What they’re not telling you is all the limitations of this technology and the fact that it only makes FULL backups faster. Since Veeam uses a proven synthetic backup approach we only require 1 full backup. Here are some other limitations of that patent pending technology:

1. No benefit in incremental backups (deleting NTFS data does not update disk content, so data blocks do not change and are not picked up by CBT in an incremental backup)
2. Limited to NTFS and basic disks
3. Limited to full ESX since it relies on the Service Console (does not work with ESXi)
4. Not supported on direct SAN backups utilizing the vStorage API for Data Protection (90% of Veeam customers use VADP)
5. Without built-in dedupe their “full” backups are still larger than Veeam’s.

Be Careful What You Read, It May be Paid for

I’ve seen some materials that are pointing to an analysis provided by a “pay for play” blogger. I’m not going to mention names or link to sites here because I’d rather not give anyone the traffic. My only advice here (and this goes especially for the VAR community) is to research any “independent” sources your vendor is quoting, there’s a good chance they paid for that analysis and those words.

And finally, consider this: what does it mean when a vendor promotes a survey of beta customers in which 39% of the participants claimed reliability was the most important NEW capability. If reliability is a new capability, then I understand why so many partners and customers have chosen and continue to choose Veeam Backup & Replication

Let’s take a look at an example.

You come into work on Monday morning and you’ve got an inbox full of emails about a particular virtual machine. On Friday everything was working fine but on Monday it won’t respond, even though you can see it’s powered on and you can access the console through the vSphere client.

After a reboot doesn’t fix the issue, you now need to determine what changed. Using the vSphere client, you can see that doug.hazelman changed a custom attribute:

The screenshot above shows that the Custom Attribute “TEEAM_FUNCTION” was changed to PROD for the VM “XPViewTemp”. This is slightly helpful in that you know you have an automated process that reconfigures VM’s based on custom attribute values. Setting “TEEAM_FUNCTION” to PROD kicked off a script that moved it to the production network which is why people who could access it on Friday can’t access it today. The easy fix it to change “TEEAM_FUNCTION” back to the previous value…but what was it? The proper setting determines how this VM works, you need a quick resolution. Veeam Reporter to the rescue! All you need to do is run the infrastructure changes report showing all changes for that VM over the weekend. Clicking the name of the VM in the report, you can easily see that the old value was DEV:

Now all you have to do is change the attribute back to the correct value, let your automated script reconfigure the VM and you’re good to go!

The above example is a bit of a stretch (who automates VM configuration based on attributes?) but was meant to show how quickly and easily it is to get this data from Reporter 4. While the scenario above shows a change made in a relatively short time frame, what if the change had been made 2 months ago? How would use us the vSphere Client (or even PowerShell) to find who changed it as well as what the previous value was? Reporter 4 can give you that audit data for any time frame, you choose a date and Reporter shows you the configuration as it was on that date. If you want to see how an object has changed over a period of time (including WHO changed it), just select a time “window” for your report to get the detail.

There are a lot of powerful, new features in Reporter 4. I did the voice for this quick overview video, check it out and then download Reporter 4 to see what YOU can do with it.