New Veeam Availability Suite Combines Backup, Monitoring

Veeam, the Baar, Switzerland-based developer of leading data protection technology for virtualized environments, Tuesday rolled out version 8 of its Veeam Backup & Replication software, as well as an integrated suite that also includes its Veeam One monitoring and reporting software.

The introduction of the Veeam Availability Suite, which integrates Veeam's backup and recovery software with its monitoring and reporting software, is part of a move by Veeam to play a bigger role in the modern data center, said CEO RatmirTimashev.

The modern data center has three primary building blocks that must be addressed, including virtualized servers, storage, and networking; evolving storage technologies; and new cloud technologies, Timashev told CRN.

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Availability of IT resources depends on all three building blocks working as promised, he said. "Business requirements have changed dramatically in the last five years," he said. "It's an always-on business world, with customers demanding instant access to data from any device."

Veeam is addressing that requirement with its Veeam Backup & Replication v8 software and updates to Veeam One, Timashev said.

Bringing the two together with the Veeam Availability Suite helps bridge the gap between near-instant data recovery, which was typically reserved for only mission-critical applications, and the typical hours-long time needed to bring up non-mission-critical applications, Timashev said.

"Our goal is to provide a combined return to operations and recovery point objective time of 15 minutes for all legacy applications, not just mission-critical applications," he said. "The old paradigm of offering RTO [recovery time objectives] for mission-critical apps with backups for the rest of the applications does not work in modern data centers."

Veeam One in the past provided monitoring, reporting and capacity planning for backup jobs and backup capacity in VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualized environments, Timashev said. The new version now integrates directly with VMware's backup software to provide the same capabilities, he said.

Veeam Backup & Replication v8 includes tighter integration with third-party storage arrays. The company in April said the application would support NetApp's Snapshot, SnapMirror and SnapVault capabilities, letting it use NetApp's APIs to enable granular backup and recovery using NetApp's snapshot capabilities.

Also new is integration with EMC's Data Domain Boost, which distributes parts of the dedupe function when using Data Domain as a backup appliance to the backup server to increase performance.

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Veeam Backup & Replication v8 also adds built-in WAN acceleration for replication jobs, as well as end-to-end AES 256-bit encryption for virtual machine backups, network traffic and data written to tape, he said.

Veeam is a proven innovator and continues to improve on the deployment ease of its software even as it moves more into enterprise deployments, said Jason Silva, a principal at Revel Technology, a Houston-based solution provider and five-year Veeam channel partner.

With Veeam Backup & Replication v8, the company has shown it can expand its relationships with other vendors, which is a major plus for channel partners, Silva said.

"Veeam's software is a nice fit for a variety of primary storage vendors," he said. "It lets us partner to offer larger solutions. NetApp has a large installed base. We can take Veeam into those customers to explore new opportunities."

The Veeam Availability Suite provides a unique solution that combines Veeam's backup and recovery technology with Veeam One's management, Silva said.

"It makes a complete solution," he said. "Many of their competitors can't necessarily provide the same capabilities, but instead rely on add-on modules. By putting them together with the Veeam Availability Suite, Veeam is giving customers insight into their backups and recovery they didn't have before."

The Veeam Availability Suite is slated to be released in late August or early September.

PUBLISHED MAY 20, 2014