Veeam Replication

VEEAM is a host-based backup solution requires snapshots to be taken at the guest level. This has a number of challenges as they should not be taken on high I/O servers and are also not supported by Microsoft. On the positive side of VEEAM it is a very good technology for taking multiple incremental backups. VEEAM works via a technology called reverse backup whereas traditional incremental backups using software such as Backup Exec we would have to restore a master backup and then create smaller incremental afterwards, VEEAM works by creating a master file when it then takes the next backup the master file is updated and the changes are pushed down to a smaller incremental file, when restoring a backup from VEEAM you are able to store the single backup file and not need to restore intermediate incremental backup, but in addition this allows you to roll back to previous versions and VEEAM will then apply the incremental to get a backup from whatever point in time you require.

The VEEAM technology uses change block tracking when used with VMware means that the underlying VMware hypervisor tracks the changes made vastly speeding up the time to take a

Incremental backup. VEEAM working at the hypervisor level also means that the load put on the host is uniform and does not impact any performance so if it wasn’t for the snapshot problem there would be no issue in running backups during the day. VEEAM is a byte level backup technology as opposed to a bit level, the amount of data that is replicated is more than the Doubletake solution. VEEAM has the ability to QueueSQ the underlying guest operating system before it takes a snapshot allowing it to make use of the built in shadow copy functionality of Windows to QS the exchange and SQL databases before the snapshot is taken.

As a backup technology VEEAM is able to save individual files to a hard disk and then this can either be copied onto a removable drive or transferred to tape by using a product such as Backup Exec. The disadvantage of doing this is that you are putting all your reliance into a single flat file. If that file becomes corrupt either through copying to tape or at the point of backup you will not know this and will not be able to restore any part of the VM. Therefore to be confident that these files are not corrupted we need to find a way of being able to mount them and test them in a lab environment to confirm a bootable backup.

VEEAM has a number of different ways of restoring data from a flat file backup in the event of recovery. VEEAM has a technology called instant restore that allows you to mount the backup in an emulated environment. While this allows for instant access to the VM it puts a significant load on the server as it is having to emulate the VMDKs.

VEEAM has a traditional restore that allows you to restore the flat file backup into the original VMDKs. This will take a significant amount of time depending on the size of the VMDK.

VEEAM also allows us single file restore. In a single file restore VEEAM will mount the VMDK behind the scenes and give an explorer style access to the available drives. This is a good technique for making sure that the flat file backup is not corrupt. As VEEAM takes multiple numbers of snapshots the further back you go in snapshots the more increments are need to be combined to produce the file.

VEEAM Enterprise has the ability for application level restores. This allows for restoring individual databases, individual exchange items and individual active directory objects. This product is great for less intense I/O Servers