Veeam Backup & Replication is a solution for data backup and recovery in virtual environments of any scale and complexity on VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V platforms. In this article, we will describe the main features of the solution.
More and more organizations are migrating their infrastructure from a physical to a virtual environment. However, this can lead to problems with preserving valuable data. Ensuring the integrity and availability of data is not only a requirement of the organization itself but in some industries, this is also demanded by the government. Typically, various data backup and recovery tools are used for this purpose. Veeam Backup & Replication is a solution that meets both objectives.
What is Veeam Backup & Replication
Veeam Backup & Replication is designed for backing up applications and data while ensuring their quick and secure restoration in Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere virtual infrastructures.
The main features of the solution include the following:
- Backup – the entire virtual machine image is backed up. Veeam Backup & Replication backs up data in blocks, processing it before saving it to a repository. The data itself is stored in a special format in the repository.
- Backup verification – testing the created backups for recovery and further functionality.
- Instant VM recovery – enables restoring a virtual machine to a working condition in seconds by launching it directly from a backup without retrieving the image from the backup.
- Entire virtual machine restoring – allows you to fully restore any condition of a virtual machine (or even multiple virtual machines) matching the restore points generated during backup.
- Guest operating system file recovery – Individual files and folders of guest operating systems of a virtual machine can be restored almost instantly (on the fly) directly from a backup copy of the virtual machine.
- Virtual machine disk recovery – available only for VMware ESX(i) environment, this feature allows recovering virtual machine disks retaining the original disk format or changing it to Thin or Thick formats.
- VM file recovery – provides recovery of individual files of virtual machines (VHD, XML, VMDK, VMX) directly from backups of virtual machines without restoring their images first.
- Microsoft SQL Server database backup and restore - enables to create Microsoft SQL Server backups and copy transaction logs as well.
- Backup archiving – create a "backup" for the backup copy in case it is lost. This provides maintaining a long-term archive of all necessary virtual machine backups.
- Replication – provides an exact copy of the source virtual machine on the backup host, allowing you to quickly switch to it to restore critical services and applications.
- Switching back to the original virtual machine – transferring the load back from the replica (to which you switched to restore the original machine) to the original virtual machine.
Additional features
Besides the basic features, Veeam Backup & Replication with its optional distributed backup infrastructure management server (Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager) provides the following set of additional features (relevant for a distributed backup infrastructure):
Guest OS file searching and recovery. Thanks to Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager web-based console, restoring files to a "live" virtual machine from its backup is literally a matter of one mouse-click.
File restoration tasks delegation. Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager offers delegation of file recovery tasks between users of the application itself and the owner of the virtual machine. Thus, they can recover data on their own, if necessary, without waiting for an administrator.
Cloning and editing tasks. It is the creation of task templates for their subsequent use. Cloning will create a full copy of the original job with the ability to edit various settings within it.
Data recovery from a backup with no password. This is probably one of the most requested features of Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager in case your organization uses encrypted backups. It allows you to recover data from an encrypted backup in case the password is lost or the administrator gets fired.
A cloud backup system works automatically to keep your workflow running smoothly. An automated cloud backup strategy copies information as it is created and stores it in a secure data center. Offsite storage is the safest and most secure place to store business data. Cloud backup is more than just keeping your data in a secure location. Your business data will also be organized in a way that makes it easier and faster to recover.
To build a reliable cloud backup system based on Veeam solutions, contact Cloud4U. Our experts have the expertise to design a cloud backup strategy tailored perfectly for any business.
