Veeam Backup & Replication
What is Veeam Backup & Replication?
Veeam Backup & Replication is a software product developed by Veeam Software to back up, restore and replicate data on virtual machines (VMs). First released in 2008, this data protection and disaster recovery technology is part of the Veeam Availability Suite.
Veeam was among the first vendors to develop backup software tailored to VMs. Before Veeam, backup applications failed to recognize the difference between protecting physical and virtual machines.
Key functionality of Veeam Backup & Replication
Veeam Backup & Replication delivers certain key functionalities. These include data availability, fast and reliable backups, flexibility and scalability, and a user-friendly interface.
While all these are important, Veeam's focus on data availability is paramount. It helps users minimize downtime and ensure business continuity.
How Veeam Backup & Replication works
Veeam Backup & Replication takes a novel approach to backing up VMs. It operates at the virtualization layer, interacting with other software like VMware vSphere or Hyper-V that manage VMs without installing agents within each VM.
Veeam creates backups by instructing the virtualization software to take snapshots of VMs. These snapshots capture the whole VM state, including configuration, memory and virtual disks. The snapshot can then be used as a temporary copy for Veeam to work.
At a block level, Veeam can retrieve data from the VM disks and copy only the blocks that have changed, as the last backup will have been copied. VMware's Changed Block Tracking enables this, helping to minimize data transfers and accelerating backups. Before storing the data in its proprietary format in the backup repository, Veeam compresses and duplicates the data.
Some of the backup options Veeam offers include the following:
- Full backups that take a snapshot of the entire VM at a specified time.
- Incremental backups that take a snapshot of only the data that has changed since the previous backup.
- Reverse incremental backups that create a full backup from a chain of incremental backups.
Incremental backups are ideal for long-term archiving.
Veeam's Instant Recovery can boot a fully functional VM directly from a backup file in minutes. This approach helps reduce downtime during disaster scenarios. Veeam also supports application-aware restores for specific data types, such as Structured Query Language database transactions.
What is Veeam Replication?
Veeam replicates VM backups to a secondary location to accommodate quick failover to a replica VM whenever a potential disaster occurs at the primary site. Veeam seamlessly integrates with different storage targets, including backup appliances, on-premises storage and cloud storage options. It also offers wide-area network acceleration features that enable efficient transfers.
Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition
Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition is a free version of the paid backup software. It provides similar tools and features to protect data, but has certain limitations.
The free Community Edition lets users back up a maximum of 10 VMs, physical servers, workstations and network-attached storage instances. Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition provides core functions included in the paid version of Veeam Backup & Replication: backup, recovery and replication.
A fundamental Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition limitation is the 10-instance restriction, which makes it only suitable for personal use cases or small environments. It also lacks advanced features like enhanced security functions, more granular control over scheduling and backup jobs, and support for large workloads and deployments.
Organizations with more than 10 VMs or large environments are better off paying for an option such as Veeam Backup & Replication Enterprise Plus. The free edition is useful to test Veeam's functions and features before committing to a paid plan.
Veeam Backup & Replication Console
Veeam Backup & Replication Console is essentially a command center for seamless management of backups. It's a separate software component IT teams can use to interact with the server and manage the entire backup infrastructure.
Users can configure backups for physical servers and VMs, schedule and monitor backup processes, and initiate recoveries from the Veeam Backup & Replication Console. They can also manage repositories, monitor the overall health and performance of the environment, and replicate backups to a secondary site.
Users can install Veeam Backup & Replication Console on a different machine for remote access and install as many consoles as needed. Multiple administrators can make changes without conflicts and manage backups simultaneously. This makes it a crucial tool for organizations leveraging Veeam to secure enterprise data.
Explore top troubleshooting tips for Veeam backup failure and read about the differences between replication vs. backup and synchronous vs. asynchronous replication. Learn why replication is a key technology for disaster recovery and check out the differences between hardware replication vs. software replication.
