Today, Veeam released Veeam Backup for AWS v2. This is a major milestone release that contains a lot of enhancements that are needed for a successful data protection solution in the cloud, steered by feedback and requests from the user base. As Veeam continues to develop its Cloud Data Management solutions, the latest release of Veeam Backup for AWS really does bring it to the forefront of providing true enterprise-grade cloud data protection.
For those not already using Veeam Backup for AWS, the solution is deployed right from the AWS Marketplace and enables you with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) backup using native AWS snapshots, backup to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) object storage, or perform backup copy jobs to any other Veeam-supported repository through Veeam Backup and Replication. Recovery options are equally flexible and very fast to minimize the risk of outage, with full and file-level recovery options within AWS or to any other Veeam-supported platform.
Let’s take a look at some of the highlights in this newest release.
Snapshot replication
Veeam Backup for AWS now enables you to replicate snapshots across regions and accounts for AWS disaster recovery (DR). This capability opens new possibilities for leveraging separate accounts for AWS DR use cases and is extremely easy to setup.
Simply define the source region, target region and account for snapshot replication when configuring policies, and then Veeam Backup for AWS will replicate all the snapshots taken of the instances included in this policy to that destination. To recover the workload, you can perform a restore from the remote snapshot. Another great feature is the ability to use encryption keys to store these snapshots, greatly enhancing the security of the replicas being taken.
Reduced AWS cost
Recently, AWS released a new capability called “EBS direct APIs for Snapshots.” This enables Changed Block Tracking (CBT) on Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes via Amazon EBS snapshots. Veeam Backup for AWS will leverage these APIs to directly read snapshots and check the changes between them without creating new volumes or instances. This not only helps streamline the backup process by reducing backup times and providing lower RPOs, but also significantly reduces the costs customers experience.
Application-aware backups
Support for application aware backups is now included. Rather than performing crash consistent backups, it is possible to enable application aware backups. This helps when specific applications suffer from corruption or data loss when a backup is taken without the application being aware of it. When creating the backup policy, simply enable the check box to turn on application-aware snapshots.
Automation
The latest release of Veeam Backup for AWS includes a full public RESTful API. All Veeam Backup for AWS operations are available via API calls, allowing traditional customers and service providers to build and integrate Veeam Backup for AWS into their solutions. Using a Swagger UI (which is included), it is easy to build out a fully integrated and automated backup solution.
Other enhancements
Veeam has introduced several other enhancements in this release of Veeam Backup for AWS. For example, there is an updated harmonized scheduler that includes the ability to build out a a backup schedule with more granular controls. You can configure the times, days, weeks, months and years for the backups, snapshots and replicas to be processed, while also specifying the times that can be run individually and together.
Once you pick the schedule scenario you want, you can then build out the required schedule for snapshots, replicas and backups.
In summary, this new release of Veeam Backup for AWS brings fantastic capabilities to the AWS platform and helps provide customers with AWS-native backup and recovery to protect their data. For Veeam customers managing hybrid- or multi-cloud environments, you can use it alongside Veeam Backup & Replication, giving you the flexibility and power to move and manage your data regardless of where it lives.
There’s more than I can cover in a single blog post, so I encourage you to go out and deploy the newest release through the AWS Marketplace and take it for a spin. In true Veeam style, you can even protect up to 10 Amazon EC2 instances for FREE.