Veeam v7 – 7 new features announced plus 2 additional – updated

So Veeam Backup & Replication v7 is just around the corner.  As always the details of the exact release date are unknown but as this is going to be a significant release, Veeam have decided to tease us all by announcing the larger of the enhancements every couple of weeks.

It was originally believed that there were only going to be 7 announcements of new features for v7 of the software but recently it has been revealed that there will actually be 2 additional announcements totalling 9 significant features to keep Veeam in the lead with regards to virtualisation backups. – Update:  The final two announcements have now been made – details below

There are also rumoured to be around 30 additional smaller improvements that have been made to the software and this is going to be as big a release as the v5 release which was an impressive release for Veeam.

The 7 announced features are listed below (I will also add in the additional features once they are known):

1.   vCloud Director
Veeam have revealed enhanced backup and recovery for vCloud Director.  The vCD infrastructure will be displayed directly in Veeam Backup & Replication, also with the capability to backup all vApp metadata and attributes along with restoration of vApps and VMs directly into vCD.  (This has also now been released as an add-on for Veeam Backup & Replication v6.5)

2.  vSphere Web Client
The new version of the Veeam software will have a plug-in for the vSphere Web Client.  You will now be able to monitor backups and the backup infrastructure directly from vSphere.  It will also identify unprotected VMs and simplify capacity planning.

3.  Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Sharepoint
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Sharepoing will provide instant visibility into backups taken from Sharepoint along with advanced search capabilities.  Individual Sharepoint items can also be recovered quickly.  (This is available as a beta)

4.  Virtual Lab for Hyper-V
As it always seems, Hyper-V is playing catchup.  Veeam are extending the U-AIR, Surebackup and On-Deman Sandbox functions to Hyper-V environments.  vPower will also become available to allow agent-free recovery of individual objects from any virtualised application.

5.  Archive to Tape
This is one of the most requested features in Veeam (we can’t really understand why).  Veeam will now allow an archive to be taken to any tape device (as long as the drivers and the device are accepted by Windows).  Restores will be slow and it will only be able to be used for archives… there will be no funky instant recovery or anything like that on this feature… it just wouldn’t be worthwhile.

6.  Enhanced 1-Click Restore
1-click restore gets a performance improvement as well as a new delegation feature to allow the delegation of file and VM recovery to business owners.

7.  Virtual Lab for Replicas
Surebackup but for your replicas… this will now allow you to automatically verify every restore point in every replica.  You will also be able to create a virtual lab to deliver the fastest agent-free recovery of application objects.  This is ideal for testing, training and troubleshooting.

Update

Disruptive Innovations
The final two announcements are classed as ‘Disruptive Innovations’ – pushing the boundaries of what is expected from a backup / replication software

8.  Backup from Storage Snapshots
Initially designed to work with HP storage, this allows for backups and replicas to be performed every 5 minutes – even during business hours, with no impact to the production environment.  Veeam are already investigating extending this functionality to other major storage vendors.

9.  Built-in WAN Acceleration
To help to increase the speed of offsite backups, Veeam have introduced an in-built WAN acceleration tool, specifically optimised for Veeam traffic.  This means that you can exclude Veeam traffic from your current WAN optimisation solution, if you have one, and allow Veeam to handle it for you.  Veeam are saying that you can now get backups offsite 50x faster than before

Interestingly the WAN acceleration area seems to be similar to a piece of software that some of the Veeam guys used to suggest using, called HyperIP.  Now I’m not saying that it is the same technology but it does seem very similar especially as Veeam are a partner of HyperIP.

Find out more at:  http://go.veeam.com/v7