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

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.

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 VMware platform (and virtualization in general). Expect more great things from Veeam as we continue to innovate on these virtualization platforms.

From the Microsoft perspective, there are 3 core rules to backup and recovery of Exchange servers:

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.

Rule 1: VSS Aware Backup

Veeam implements proprietary Microsoft VSS integration, instead of relying on VMware Tools VSS integration components.

• Fully automated and transparent (no agents to deploy/configure/update/monitor)
• Supported directly by Veeam, not VMware (no finger pointing)
• No limitations of VMware Tools VSS: supports transaction logs processing, all ESX(i) and Windows versions, dynamic disks, IDE disks, VM without UUID, etc.

More information:

• Veeam Backup v5 FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/v5FAQ
• VMware VSS limitations: http://www.sys-con.com/node/1544145

Rule 2: Verify Before You Rely

SureBackup Recovery Verification

• Great flexibility (supports custom scripts)
• Choose method of verification that is sufficient for you: remote run eseutil or isinteg on test VM (no stress on production), log on to test mailbox via HTTPS and query test email message

Keep in mind DC dependency!

• Exchange must see DC to be able to properly boot in the isolated environment. SureBackup Application Groups take care of this for you.

Rule 3: VSS Aware Restore

Restores to original location must be done exclusively with the Exchange VSS Writer, and in correct sequence:

• Boot up Exchange VM with mailbox stores dismounted
• Tell Exchange VSS Writer to perform restore from VSS snapshot
• Mount mailbox stores

Veeam implements these Microsoft requirements

• Most image-level backup vendors do not do this, they just boot VM normally like there is no Exchange present
• Perform a test restore to check your current solution and look for these events on the restored Exchange server, if they don’t exist your vendor is not following Rule 3:

Transaction Logs

If transaction log files are not pruned after backup, the log files accumulate until they fill all the available disk space. The Exchange VSS Writer implements transaction log pruning capabilities, however VMware Tools VSS is NOT a backup application and cannot know if backup was completed successfully. Thus, it cannot process transaction logs by design.

• Any application “riding” on VMware Tools VSS instead of providing proprietary VSS integration will not truncate logs.
• Some solutions do provide transaction log pruning, but perform log pruning right after the snapshot is taken.

This approach is actually worse than no pruning at all: if backup does not complete successfully, you will not have a good backup, and your transaction logs will be gone. You will not be able to restore in case of disaster.

To check your current image-level solution, perform test a backup to check (on a test Exchange server, not production)

• Perform backup, wait for the job to complete successfully, ensure transaction logs are actually pruned.
• Perform another backup, but this time reset the backup server while the job is running (after virtual disk copy starts). Transaction logs should NOT be pruned.

Veeam prunes logs on successful backup by default and v5 provides advanced transaction log handling options as seen in this screen shot:

Granular Recovery Challenges

Typically granular recovery from an image-level backup was difficult, you had to restore entire Active Directory and Exchange servers to an isolated environment before your could restore any items. The process is time and personnel resource intensive. There are some 3rd party tools that mount the Exchange data store but these still require data stores to be extracted first (time and disk space) and there’s an additional licensing cost associated (usually per mailbox)

Agent-based solutions have existed for years that can back up the Exchange data, but that’s not the most efficient way to backup Exchange in a virtual environment. Additionally, if you combine agent based with image based, you are backing up the same data twice, taking additional resources and storage media.

Granular Recovery with vPower™

Veeam’s patent-pending approach fully utilizes the existing virtual infrastructure. The Veeam application group and virtual lab features automatically create an isolated environment and with vPower, you simply run the AD and Exchange servers directly from the backup files, no extraction necessary.

Veeam’s Exchange AIR (Application Item Recovery) Wizard utilizes Microsoft Exchange APIs and connects to both the production and isolated environments providing you with Exchange item-level recovery in minutes, not hours!

More Information

Microsoft on Exchange 2003 VSS Backup and Restore http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822896

Microsoft on Exchange 2007 VSS Backup and Restore http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd233256(EXCHG.80).aspx

Application-aware image processing section of v5 FAQ http://tinyurl.com/v5FAQ

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 talking about physical vs. virtual and the change happening in the industry. The backup and DR space was very different in the age of the mainframe…then came Windows…now comes virtualization.
Read more>>

Our approach to multi-OS file level recovery is patent-pending, and is based on virtual appliance architecture. We provide a specially designed FLR helper virtual appliance based on a Linux kernel which has a minimal set of components, but is extended to be smart enough to be able to read data from multiple file systems and understand not just basic disks, but also things like Linux LVM (Logical Volume Manager) and Windows LDM (Logical Disk Manager) partitions. The appliance is very small in size (around 10MB), and takes just 20 seconds to boot, making the solution very light-weight and fast.

To perform file level recovery, our product automatically mounts the VMDK files of the selected VM to FLR appliance as virtual hard drives. Due to some magic under the hood, the VMDK files are mounted directly from backup files, without having to extract those VMDK's first (similar approach to our instant Windows file-level recovery introduced in Veeam Backup 1.0).

Since we first introduced multi-OS FLR, we have continued to innovate and push the envelope of what's possible with image level backups. With Veeam Backup & Replication v5 we're introducing vPower, but we're also making an update to our multi-OS FLR approach. While the existing method worked great because it allowed us to support multiple file systems, some customers had an issue with the fact that our solution required VMware Player in order to operate. While there's nothing technically wrong with VMware Player, you can't install it on a virtual machine; this meant that our customers had to have at least 1 physical server if they wanted to take advantage of multi-OS FLR.

With Veeam Backup & Replication v5, we're moving away from VMware Player and on to ESX to run our FLR appliance. For our existing customers, this means that you no longer need a physical server to recover individual files from non-Windows file systems, all without any changes to the user experience. We're also introducing support for additional file systems, including commonly requested ZFS file system (most common choice for Solaris), bringing the total number of supported file systems to 15.

While version 5.0 provides wizard-driven experience for 15 of the most commonly used file systems, with our new, patent-pending vPower functionality it no longer means you are limited to only those 15. In fact, you will be able to recover from ANY file system! As we have already demonstrated, our vPower engine provides ability to publish any backed up VMDK on our vPower NFS datastore, directly from a compressed backup file. With the VMDK files readily available, you can simply mount these VMDKs to any VM that can read the corresponding file system (including the original VM), and restore the required files using native OS file management tools!

Alternatively, you can mount VMDK directly to your workstation, and use whatever tools you are using today to read data from those file systems. For example, FLR from Novell NSS volumes can be performed with Portlock Explorer – a tool that most Netware admins already have installed and are using every day.

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.

Read more>>

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

So what does that mean for current customers? Will they get Standard or Enterprise if they’re current on maintenance? They answer is the choice is yours! Yes, for a limited time Veeam will be offering customers current on maintenance the choice of Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 Standard or Enterprise once it’s released. This means that all of our current customers can rest easy and know that they’ll have the option of getting all the great new Virtualization-Powered Protection features that will be released later this year. Of course anyone who’s not a current customer but purchases Veeam Backup & Replication by 18 June 2010 will also be eligible for this offer.

If you’re not familiar with the Virtumania podcast put on by Rich Brambley and Mark Farley, be sure to check out Episode 6: “The Mean Green Veeam Team”, also available on iTunes. Rich and Mark invited David Siles and myself on to talk a little about Veeam and the virtualization market in general. I made an announcement about this offer on the podcast (right around 6:12).

What’s the difference?

While the exact details of the release a still being worked out, the table below details functionality that we know at this time to be included in Standard and Enterprise. You can also register for the upgrade here (along with more details on the offer): http://www.veeam.com/go/free-enterprise-upgrade

Feature	Standard	Enterprise	Notes
Data Protection Modes
Backup
Replication			2-in-1: backup and replication for one price, in one cohesive solution; includes replica rollback and replication to/from ESXi
Hot VM copy			Facilitates ad hoc backups and migrations
FastSCP™			Integrates Veeam FastSCP, the #1 file management tool for VMware administrators, into the operator console
Architecture
vStorage APIs			Highly efficiency and “future-proof” solution that uses the vStorage APIs for Data Protection
Changed Block Tracking			Lightning-fast incremental backups to minimize backup windows and allow for more frequent replication
Multiple backup options			Back up directly from SAN, over LAN, with virtual appliance, or direct from target
Centralized control of distributed deployment			Includes Enterprise Manager, a web-based console that provides a consolidated view of your distributed deployment; includes federation of multiple backup servers, centralized reporting, and consolidating alerting
FastSCP			Leverages Veeam’s proven FastSCP engine
Synthetic backup			Eliminates the need for periodic full backups (provides “forever incremental” backup), thus saving time and space
SmartDedupe™			10x space savings on backup storage
SmartCDP™			Near-continuous data protection (near-CDP) at a fraction of the cost of traditional CDP
Instant File-Level Recovery
Windows
Linux
Other			Unix, Solaris, BSD, Mac
Indexing and Search
Windows guest file system indexing			Creates an index (catalog) of all Windows guest files that have been backed up
Search across backups	Current backups	All backups (current & archived)	Quickly search for guest files across backups
SureBackup™
Recovery verification	Manual	Automated
Advanced VSS support
Application-Item Recovery
Universal application-item recovery			OS- and application-agnostic object-level recovery for application administrators
User-directed recovery			Available for any application with a web front-end