Veeam Claims New Solution Backs Up 10+ Times Faster

Veeam Software says it has achieved a major breakthrough in full and incremental backup speeds with version 4.0 of Veeam Backup & Replication.

The new capabilities are due in part to the product’s ability to leverage advanced functionality in VMware vSphere 4, especially the new changed block tracking and thin-provisioned disks features.

Now generally available, version 4.0 is one of the first products to support the new VMware vSphere 4 vStorage APIs for Data Protection. Veeam Backup & Replication takes full advantage of VMware vSphere 4 thin-provisioned disks, enabling faster full backups and restores of virtual machines. It also gives VMware administrators the ability to leverage VMware vSphere 4 changed block tracking for performance improvements that beta customers report as more than ten times faster than the previous version of Veeam Backup & Replication.

These technological advancements within VMware vSphere 4 and the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection take data protection to the next level in Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0. Beta customers reported the following benefits derived from native support of thin-provisioned disks and changed block tracking:

• Incremental backup and replication is 10 or more times faster (for typical VMs and workloads)
• Full backup and replication is up to five times faster
• Changed block tracking allows for replication cycles as fast as one to three minutes, resulting in near continuous data protection (CDP) at a fraction of the cost of traditional CDP, making it affordable to customers of all sizes
• Primary and backup storage costs decreased by nearly 30 percent

Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0 also introduces the concept of “centralized backup, decentralized recovery” with its Enterprise Manager. This allows companies to scale the backup infrastructure in distributed enterprise environments by deploying multiple backup servers. Enterprise Manager centralizes the backup process, which includes centralized backup configuration as well as reporting and alerting. It also provides decentralization and delegation of recovery based on groups of applications (e.g. Microsoft Exchange Servers), geography, administrative, security and other business specifications.

Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0 is now generally available. North American pricing for the new version starts at $599 per socket, but the previous version’s price of $499 per socket will be honored on orders placed by Dec. 31, 2009.