Veeam Blog

In this blog post, I’ll be covering a very real-world solution with Veeam PN where it will be used to easily connect geographically disparate cloud hosting zones, enabling you to achieve High Availability for applications and provide cross cloud application and services access. This is probably the most exciting of the three use cases I will cover in this blog series on Veeam PN, and with multi-cloud adoption in full swing, this is a very timely and useful capability.

On January 2018, Veeam publicly announced the release of Veeam PN (powered network) version 1, a lightweight SDN appliance that was released completely FREE to use. And while Veeam PN was released as part of a greater solution focused on extending network Availability for Microsoft Azure, Veeam PN can also be deployed as a standalone tool via a downloadable OVA. Veeam PN has some key standalone use cases we’ll explore in this blog series.

Networking has always been one of the most complex parts of any IT solution, and whether you are connecting into a remote site, connecting branch offices together or extending on-premises networks to the cloud, there is traditionally a high level of complexity and cost that's involved in establishing a reliable networking solution. When it comes to networking during a disaster, the level of complexity and margin for error is magnified. In relative terms, it has become easy to back up, replicate and then recover workloads, but getting access to those recovered systems remains a cumbersome process.

It's been nearly a year since VMware released vSphere 6.5 which marked the 12^th major release of VMware's hypervisor and hypervisor management product suite. And while VMware has been focusing on more recent products like vSAN and NSX, it shouldn't be forgotten that vSphere still remains at the core of the virtualization platform on top of which all other products are consumed. Veeam has a strong history of working with and supporting vSphere features, and the 6.5 release is no different.

NEW Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.0 has the ability to back up directly to Veeam Cloud Connect repositories without any additional investments from the VCSP. It just works as part of any existing Cloud Connect Backup infrastructure built on Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 2. As we did with Cloud Connect Backup and then Cloud Connect Replication in resolving the complexity around getting virtual machine backups, backup copy jobs and replicas up into a cloud platform, we have now resolved the complexity of getting physical servers and workstations as well as cloud-based Windows instances into cloud environments operated by our VCSP partners.

I am happy to announce that the Update 2 download for Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 is now available for Veeam service providers! This is the latest update for our flagship product and adds support for the upcoming release of Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.0 along with other significant enhancements and bug fixes. But when it comes to our cloud and service providers, the biggest new feature is Veeam Backup Remote Access. Let’s dive straight into this new feature!

For a number of years now, Veeam has been talking about the 3-2-1 rule of backups, whereby you keep three copies of your backup data on two different media types with at least one of those backups held off-site. Traditionally, most organizations have been able to put this into play by taking advantage of on-premises storage and media hardware along with multiple data center locations to cater for the off-site requirements. This is where off-site data backup services can come into play to satisfy the off-site backup services requirement.

There’s a plethora of different cloud service providers out there. They range from traditional integrators offering backup services on top of their managed offerings to Information as a Service (IaaS) providers looking to specialize in business continuity and disaster recovery (DR), and even to the hyper-scale public clouds that offer platform services that can be consumed as part of an off-site backup solution. It’s important to understand the requirements around choosing cloud service providers that offer data backup, replication and recovery services, whether you are a large enterprise or a small-to-medium-size business (SMB).

With the release of Veeam Backup & Replication v8 in 2014, Veeam redefined the way in which businesses of all shapes and sizes could extend their system and data Availability strategies to consume backup offerings from trusted service providers, with the launch of Veeam Cloud Connect Backup. Veeam Cloud Connect was made available for all Veeam customers who now had the ability to engage with a number of Veeam Cloud & Service Provider partners worldwide directly from their Backup & Replication console and configure offsite backup repositories to which virtual machines could be sent to over a secure internet connection, redefining the 3-2-1 rule of backups (three copies of data, on two types of media, one of which is off-site).

Modern enterprises know that disasters are a fact of life. They also understand that disasters come in many shapes and sizes and lead to varying degrees of Availability loss and impact on business continuity. Because major wide-scale disasters occur way less often than smaller disasters from within a data center, it’s also important to plan and test cloud disaster recovery models for smaller disasters that can happen at VM, guest OS or application levels. In this article we'll talk about the importance of planning and testing your DR strategy, as well as the categories of the cloud disaster recovery models.