I am often asked to explain why we here at Veeam have implemented the storage plug-ins and it is a simple answer: to deliver solutions faster to customers! By having storage integrations outside of product release requirements our partners can help innovate and customers can benefit with a better backup experience and amazing recovery. The latest storage plug-in is now available for the Western Digital IntelliFlash (formerly Tegile) array.
Frequently, people look at a Veeam storage plug-in for faster backups with the Backup from Storage Snapshots capability. But the plug-in brings much more:
- Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots
- Veeam Backup from Storage Snapshots
- On-Demand Sandbox for Storage Snapshots
- Primary Storage Snapshot Orchestration
These collectively make a very powerful option to not just take backups more effectively, but introduce some new recovery options. Let’s tour them here:
Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots
Veeam Explorers are usually associated with application-level restores but the Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots can use both the application restores and do more — all from an IntelliFlash storage snapshot! My favorite part of our storage integration is it allows an existing storage snapshot to be used for some recovery scenarios. This includes file-level recovery, a whole VM restore to a new location Application Object Exports (Enterprise and higher editions can restore applications and databases to original location) or even an application item.
The Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots will read the storage snapshot, then expose the snapshot’s contents to Veeam allowing the seven restore scenarios shown below:
Veeam Backup from Storage Snapshots
Leveraging the Western Digital snapshot integration will bring the real power to a backup infrastructure and make the biggest difference to backup windows. I’ve always said that this integration will allow organizations to take backups at any time. This will allow the data mover (a Veeam VMware backup proxy) to do all of the work with associated data for a backup from the storage snapshot, compared to a vSphere hypervisor snapshot. One good thing that comes along with the Veeam approach is that VMware Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is retained and application consistency is achieved. The figure below visualizes this compared to a non-integrated backup:
On-Demand Sandbox for Storage Snapshots
One of the best things that comes with the Western Digital IntelliFlash plug-in is the On-Demand Sandbox, and I encourage everyone to learn about this technology. It can be used to avoid production problems by easily producing a sandbox to test changes, perform update testing, test security configurations, upgrades and more. You can answer questions like “How long will it take?” and “What will happen?” But most importantly “Will it work?” This can save time by avoiding cancelled change requests due to not knowing exactly what to expect with some changes.
Primary Storage Snapshot Orchestration
This is a capability that many don’t know about with the Veeam storage plug-in. This capability allows users to create a Veeam job to generate a storage snapshot on the Western Digital IntelliFlash array. This should be in addition to a backup job that goes to a backup repository. This plug-in sets Western Digital IntelliFlash customers up to use Veeam Explorers for Storage Snapshots for high-speed recoveries.
Download the Western Digital IntelliFlash plug-in Now
The Western Digital IntelliFlash plug-in can now be downloaded and installed into Veeam Backup & Replication. Check it out now!
See More:
- How to configure Backup from Storage Snapshots
- On-Demand Sessions from VeeamON Virtual
