Veeam has made more than 200 updates with the latest release of Backup and Replication (B&R) software. They all help to extend protection coverage and make recovery faster. But the key enhancements in V11 are: continuous data protection (CDP); fortifying primary backups against ransomware; extending instant recovery to databases and filers; and archiving to the cloud.
Michael Cade, Veeam’s Senior Global Technologist, told Blocks & Files: “This is the biggest release that we’ve ever had.”
Included in the Veeam Availability Suite, Veeam B&R combines storage snapshots, backup, replication and CDP to support physical and virtual server and public cloud workloads.
Continuous data protection
The idea behind CDP is that any change to the protected data triggers a data copy so that no data is lost should the primary version be lost. Veeam said this added feature is intended for top tier VMware workloads needing the best possible, near-zero, Recovery Point Objective (RPO) if a server or other failure strikes.
Cade said: “We are not leveraging the VMware snapshots; we’re using the VAIO filter which splits the IO at the same point so that we’re not having to wait for VMware’s snapshots.”
These depend upon a virtual machine being temporarily paused (stunned) while the snapshot takes place. Veeam’s CDP does not need VM execution to be paused. Cade said there was no distance limit between for CDP synchronisation between source and target systems.
Ransomware
Veeam introduced ransomware protection for backup data sent to an S3 capacity tier store in B&R 10 via support for AWS S3 Object Lock.
Cade said: “We also needed to look at that primary backup solution, how do we protect your primary 7, 14, 30 day-type retention on premises from malicious activity, but also ransomware.” He said Veeam did not want to lock in its customers, for example, by selling an appliance to provide ransomware protection for primary backups.
The new ransomware protection feature in V11 works with any Linux distribution on any server hardware. The technology “uses the native Linux immutable flag as a way of being able to protect your backup files. We work together with the Linux kernel, to make sure that the flag is set to the appropriate retention period that you’ve set on your backup jobs.”
Veeam is creating, Cade said, “a hardened Linux repository … [and] service providers could also offer this as their backup-as-a-service offering.” The focus is on preventing accidental or deliberate deletion of backup jobs, and preventing ransomware destroying the backed-up data.
Cade added: “We’ve used single access sign on credentials so Veeam is not storing any of those credentials.”
Archiving and recovery
V11 adds an archive tier in the public cloud, i.e., the ability to migrate backup data to AWS S3 Deep Archive and Azure Blob Storage Archive for less expensive long term retention. This is an alternative to tape, policy-based, and complements B&R’s existing support for AWS S3, Azure Blob and GCP capacity storage tiers.
The latest B&R version extends the v10 instant recovery feature to include Microsoft SQL, Oracle databases and NAS (SMB) file shares. Veeam B&R could publish database details before but can now bring a database or file share back into production in seconds. NFS support should follow in the future.
Service matters
Veeam has some 40,000 service providers using its products, Cade revealed, and “from a strategic viewpoint I don’t believe that we’re going to create a SaaS platform for ourselves.” Instead its CSPs can offer managed backup and disaster recovery services using Veeam’s technology.
V11.0 also adds a Veeam B&R agent for MacOS. The Veeam Availability Suite gets Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator support.
Veeam is not charging extra for the B&R 11 additional functionality and V11.0 is available for download today. All the features are included in the Veeam Universal License.
