Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

backup

Veeam unveils SureBackup

by Leave a Comment

Veeam today presented a technology preview of its SureBackup concept. SureBackup is part of what Veeam calls “Virtualization-Powered Protection”. After a couple of weeks of buzz creation (including a dedicated website featuring nothing but a big countdown clock), readers might be disappointed to learn that Veeam Backup and Replication version 5, which will included the feature set that makes up SureBackup, won’t ship until Q3. (That is, July at its earliest.)

With that caveat out of the way, let’s see what the fuzz is all about.
[Read more…] about Veeam unveils SureBackup

Release: Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0

by Leave a Comment

Veeam Software, provider of systems management tools for VMware virtual datacenter environments, today announced version 4.0 of Veeam Backup & Replication, a backup solution for VMware environments.

With version 4.0, Veeam will be the first to support new VMware vSphere 4 vStorage technology. With this new release, Veeam extends its leadership in the VMware backup market with the most innovative features and the most customer value. Backup & Replication 4.0 will be demonstrated in Veeam’s booth, #1202, at VMworld 2009 in San Francisco next week.

Only Veeam Backup & Replication offers full native support for new VMware vSphere functionality, and version 4.0 takes full advantage of the VMware vStorage API. This includes:

  • Support for thin-provisioned disks, which enables faster full backups and restore of virtual machines
  • The ability to leverage ESX4 changed block tracking for much faster incremental backups
  • Support for virtual applications (vApp), resulting in more flexibility when setting up backup jobs

The vStorage API is a VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) replacement that enables local area network-free backups directly from storage area network (SAN) storage, without affecting an organization’s production ESX or ESXi hosts.

Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0 also includes a new Enterprise Management Server that enables enterprise customers to manage multiple installations of Veeam Backup & Replication through a single web console. This allows customers to centralize backup and decentralize restore processes according to their administrative, business, geographical, and security requirements and boundaries. Native support for this distributed architecture offers the ability to easily scale VMware backup infrastructure as the virtual environment grows, while also providing centralized management and reporting capabilities.

Additional new features in Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0 include:

  • Near real-time replication leveraging new vSphere ESX4 functionality to provide five-minute increments to achieve better recovery point objectives (RPOs)
  • Hot VM copy capability to mirror production environments to test lab storage, for datacenter migrations or for ad-hoc backups
  • Backup storage space monitoring with alerts for advanced backup storage capacity planning
  • Replica seeding for the initial replication using removable storage to minimize traffic over WAN

Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0 is expected to be generally available in early October. 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.

BlueBackUp Goes Virtual With Backup Product For ESX Environments

by Leave a Comment

BlueBackUp, a subsidiary of Oodrive Technologies, is enriching its focus on big company needs by offering an outsourced backup solution for virtual VMware ESX environments.

Thanks to its VMware ESX plug-in coupled with “Delta Block” technology, BlueBackUp is today proposing a complete protection solution for VMware environments. This offers hot backup possibilities in respect of critical applications (databases, etc.) and restoring an entire machine as well as a single file.

Main Features of the BlueBackUp Solution for Virtualised Environments

– Complete protection of the ESX environment: backup of the ESX server
and all its virtual machines in their entirety – applications, set-ups,
and so on and so forth.

– Hot backup of virtual machines: applications no longer have to be
stopped in order to start the backup. So there’s no activity slowdown.

– Restore granularity: possibility of restoring a virtual machine in its
entirety (OS, settings,…) or individual files (Exchange database,
SQL,…).

– Delta Block technology: only the blocks within the files that have been
altered since the last backup are sent in an encrypted and compressed
format, which seriously limits the bandwidth requirements.

– Automatic delocalisation of the backups (and images) to BlueBackUp’s
external storage servers.

Advantages for Companies Working with VMware:

– Fewer risks of data loss, thanks to the automatic delocalisation of
their virtual machines to top-security data centres.

– Less down time following a data loss, thanks to the restore procedures’
granularity.

– Fewer resources used for backup tasks, thanks to the Delta Block
technology, which prevents any deceleration of virtual environment
performance.

With this protection solution for ESX virtual servers, combined with its exclusive restore tools, BlueBackUp is reinforcing its determination to focus on big company needs and is clearly positioned as the specialist in terms of complex environmental backup.

Kaseya Announces Upgraded Backup / Disaster Recovery And Endpoint Security Modules

by 1 Comment

Kaseya announced today the release of two new versions of its popular Kaseya Endpoint Security (KES) and Backup and Disaster Recovery (BU-DR) modules. The new releases offer significant automation capabilities for fast deployment and efficient utilization of IT resources.

The endpoint security module provides integration for unified deployment and management of anti-virus, anti-spyware and rootkit protection for Microsoft OS-based servers, workstations and mobile computers. KES is integrated at both the user interface and database levels with Kaseya’s complete suite of IT automation software, providing for seamless operation and eliminating complexity.
This allows users to automate IT management and have full visibility of all deployment, configuration, status and operations of endpoint security, all within Kaseya’s unified and consistent Web-based console.
The new backup and disaster recovery functionality now includes Incremental Forever and Synthetic Full Backups for efficient offsite replication and user-defined archival capabilities. In addition, new features for Instant Virtualization allow any backup to be converted to a VMware, ESX or Virtual PC virtual disk remotely and automatically within minutes. This is an enormous time-saver that significantly eases the restoration process. With just a few clicks, customers can instantly have a key system up and running in a virtual environment. This makes it possible to recover files and folders in real time to an existing machine, to a “bare metal” machine, or to a virtual machine.

Kaseya Endpoint Security 2.0 and Backup and Disaster Recovery 3.0 are available immediately.

PHD Technologes “Acq-hires” Xtravirt Co-founder Alex Mittell

by 1 Comment

PHD Technologies (previous coverage), provider of the esXPRESS data protection solution for virtualized infrastructures, today announced the acquisition of UK-based Xtravirt’s suite of virtualization products. As part of the transaction, Xtravirt co-founder, Alex Mittell, will join PHD Technologies as Director of Research & Development. Xtravirt will continue to partner with PHD Technologies as a distributor of esXPRESS to existing and new Xtravirt customers in the UK.

The virtualization tools acquired by PHD Technologies’ will benefit managers of virtualization infrastructures. These include VI3 SnapHunter, a virtual machine snapshot reporter; VI3 PatchDownloader, an automated downloader of VMware ESX patches; VISBU, an infrastructure backup utility and KS Quick Config, a tool to speed up the deployment and configuration of VMware ESX 3 servers.

Alex Mittell is widely known as a technical expert and thought leader in the virtualization community. Prior to co-founding Xtravirt, he worked at Oxford University in the UK as a virtual architect, setting up the university’s virtual infrastructure. Mittell will continue to be based in London.

ExaGrid Teams Up With Vizioncore for VMware Backup Solution

by 1 Comment

ExaGrid Systems today announced support for Vizioncore’s backup and recovery solution, vRanger Pro (which recently got an upgrade). Both ExaGrid and Vizioncore offer products and solutions that streamline the management of data backup and recovery processes for VMware users.

Vizioncore is a provider of a comprehensive set of solutions that extend and enhance the capabilities of virtualized environments. ExaGrid offers VMware customers using Vizioncore’s vRanger Pro with the industry’s fastest backups and restores, along with high data de-duplication ratios.

Vizioncore’s vRanger Pro solution offers full image level and differential backups of virtual machines to enable faster, more efficient storage and recovery of virtual machines. ExaGrid’s Disk-based Backup systems serve as the backup target for these virtual machine images, using high-performance, post-process data de-duplication to dramatically reduce the disk storage capacity required for backups versus standard disk storage.