Alliance Technology Partners – Veeam, Acunetix, HP

Veeam Backup & Replication 4.1 Software

1) Minimize vSphere disk risk with backup and replication: Veeam Backup & Replication combines backup and near-CDP-level replication in one interface to unify both data protection processes for IT with a synthetic backup process and consistent process wizards. Backup Benchmarks: A full backup of a VM running Windows Server 2003 averaged 189 MB per second and an incremental backup of the same VM averaged 245 MB per second on a VMware ESX 4.0 host.

2) Maximize backup performance with deduplication and compression: Data deduplication, compression, and recognition of thin provisioning lowered the footprint of a full backup of 8 VMs by a factor of 9 to 1.

3) Full support for ESX and ESXi without VCB: Veeam Backup & Replication can leverage the new vStorage API or VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) when performing backup or replication, allowing SMB sites with or without shared storage to fully leverage ESXi, including the ability to replicate VMs to an ESXi host.

4) Full support for VMware vSphere Changed-Block Tracking and thin provisioning: Veeam Backup & Replication dramatically increases full and incremental backup speed, as well as reduces storage requirements.

5) Higher RPO support via Virtual CDP with replication: Via support for synthetic backup, Veeam Backup & Recovery can leverage inline data deduplication and compression to support very narrow backup windows, which provides for near continuous data protection (CDP) with replication.

6) Ensure transaction consistency at VM and application levels: Veeam Backup & Recovery employs VMware snapshots to ensure VM transaction consistency and Volume Shadow Services (VSS) for VSS-aware Windows applications such as Active Directory, SQL Server, and Exchange.

Is Veeam the Best Backup Solution for VSphere 4?

By Archie Hendryx, 18 February, 2010 23:57

When VMware first introduced VCB as part of the ESX package, it never did seem more than a temporary / complimentary solution for customers who had a small environment of 100 VMs or less. With the launch of VSphere4 and the subsequent introduction of APIs which allowed external applications and scripts to communicate directly to the ESX, it was apparent that VMware was beginning the gradual move to offload the backup solution to the Backup experts. Now having run with VSphere4 for more than six months, it seems a good time to assess and evaluate who has taken advantage and the lead with incorporating all the latest features of ESX4.

To recap; with VMs being encapsulated in a single disk file the principal was that image-level backups instead of traditional file-level allowed backups to be much faster. With VSphere4, VMware introduced improved support for thin provisioning which not only had the potential to reduce the amount of actual storage allocated but also shorten backup windows. The idea was straightforward; by using thin provisioning the system admin is given the ability to over-commit disk space, especially handy as the majority of VMs don’t use all of their allocated disk space. Thus this eradicates the problem with the majority of disk-to-disk backup applications using image-level backups i.e. no more backing up of a complete virtual disk file of a VM when most of it wasn’t actually used.

Another new addition to VSphere4 and it’s vStorage APIs was the feature of CBT (Changed Block Tracking). With CBT the VMkernel could now track the changed blocks of a VM’s virtual disk. Just by querying the information using an API call to the VMkernel, CBT alleviates the burden from the backup applications having to scan or keep track of changed blocks. This results in much quicker incremental backups as the overhead of scanning the whole VM image for changes since the last backup could now be eradicated.

So in looking around for solutions which best incorporated these new features I eventually came across Veeam. Utilising the thin provisioning feature to remove the overhead of no longer seeking out empty disk blocks and the unnecessary backing up of those empty blocks, Veeam also incorporates compression algorithms on the target backup device. Hence Veeam have a solution that not only reduces the amount of space used on the source host datastores but also the target backup storage device.

Furthermore Veeam is currently the only third party API that offer support for CBT, although ESXpress are promising something similar with their upcoming version 4. Veeam have come up with several different modes to utilise the CBT feature namely, SAN mode, Virtual Appliance mode and Network mode. Each mode brings less I/O to each device depending on your setup and thus less resource consumption when performing backups consequently leading to reduced backup windows.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/the-sanman-10014929/is-veeam-the-best-back-up-solution-for-vsphere-4-10015149/

Get More Information about Veeam Backup and Replication (Surebackup)

Get more information about Veeam Software

Virtualization specialist Veeam claims to have cracked a major obstacle to image level backup within virtualization environments, a problem that so far has raised questions about the integrity of virtual machines.

The new technology, SureBackup, has been developed to deal with the problem that backups by themselves are not always accurate. The company points out that even after a successful back, there’s no guarantee that the operating system and applications will start without errors without testing and verify the recoverability of every backup – a horrendously expensive and time-consuming task.

Veeam claims that it has now solved this challenge. Doug Hazelman, director, global systems engineer Group at Veeam said that the problem was one faced by all administrators. “It’s called crash consistent recovery- we’re taking the image of a powered-off system and it has to be powered back on but each time, we’re taking a snapshot of the backup and there’s no guarantee that every backup will be accurate.”

The company uses proprietary technology that, for the first time, allows a virtual machine to run direct from a compressed backup. By publishing the content of backup files direct to ESX hosts, Veeam said that it eliminated the need to extract backup files, and the time and storage required to do so. Hazelman said that the technology would work for any application that runs under VMware. “We’re entirely application and operating system-agnostic,” said Hazelman. “It works because we look at each virtual machine as an image, previously, you had to bring up data, now the entire server can be rendered as an image.

The company stressed that it was not talking about products but a new technology. “The products won’t be available until the second quarter of this year.” said Hazelman, “we wanted to release information about the technology well in advance to ensure that everyone understood it,” he added.

“Historically, backup archive validation has provided assurances of backup archive file integrity, but not of the applications and data contained within the archive,” said Chris Wolf, senior analyst, Burton Group. “Virtualization provides a gateway for innovative solutions to include validation of entire application stacks as part of the backup process. IT professionals no longer have to lose sleep wondering if critical data can be recovered, when they can leverage innovative solutions that validate the application integrity of each backup job.”

See full Article – http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/032310-veeam-claims-to-have-cracked.html

Veeam Announces SureBackup – The New Standard for Data Protection

More Information
http://www.alliancetechpartners.com/virtualization/veeam_sure_backup.htm

On March 22, Veeam will change the way you look at VMware Backup FOREVER!. Alliance Technology Partners will be one of the first Veeam Gold ProPartners to demo and sell SureBackup. Click HERE for the latest SureBackup Information from Alliance Technology Partners.