SureBackup is coming in Q3…are you ready? Click the link and register to stay informed!

Recently you may have seen a blog post created by Kelly Polanski, from Wave Break, and Jason Mattox from Vizioncore. In this blog post they say a number of things about Veeam as a company as well as about our Veeam Backup & Replication product. With the Vizioncore brand going away soon, we can only guess that this is a last ditch effort by Vizioncore marketing to try and convince customers to choose Vizioncore over Veeam. While we’re not going to address every point in the blog post, we do want to make sure our customers and ProPartners can feel confident with their chosen solution of Veeam Backup & Replication.

The intro is provided by Kelly Polanski who works for Wavelength, a marketing agency that Vizioncore has hired to help them with their social media. Wavelength is also affiliated with DCIG, a company that is known to be a “pay for play” blogger service and we assume the only place Vizioncore could turn to for something positive about their product . We’re also aware that Vizioncore is using this paid analyst briefing in their training to partners.

If you have followed Veeam’s announcements over the past several quarters then you know that Veeam is a financially strong and growing company. Our results from the first quarter of 2010 were announced several weeks ago and point to our continued success. Veeam is also an international company with offices across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific and 24×7 support worldwide. It is through our strong ProPartners that Veeam has been able to see such tremendous growth, a fact pointed out by CRN in a recent article. We’ve chosen not to name names previous to this, but the fact is that many of these partners came to Veeam because of their dissatisfaction with Vizioncore.

If you have any questions regarding the technical points of Jason Mattox’s blog post, please feel free to reach out to your local Veeam Team and schedule a time to discuss your questions with them or email me VMDoug<at>Veeam<dot>com. If you know Veeam and you’ve tried Veeam Backup & Replication then we’re sure you’ll see that most of Jason’s points were simply a desperate plea to try and spread rumors and make their product look better. Don’t believe Jason or us, put Veeam Backup & Replication in the lab and decide for yourself why Veeam is the #1 solution for VMware Backup and Disaster Recovery as chosen by SearchServerVirtualization.

Interestingly, more and more customers and partners are choosing Veeam. In 2009 Veeam added over 8,000 new customers while Vizioncore added less than 4,000* – that is two times more customers choosing Veeam! In Q1 of 2010 Veeam added 1,400 new customers while Vizioncore added less than 600* – that’s more than two times more customers choosing Veeam. The graphic representation of this is below:

*These estimates are based on Vizioncore marketing materials.

But of course don’t just take our word for it; here is what our customers and partners have to say about Veeam:

• INSANE BACKUP SPEED – Customer Feedback on Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0
• Worldwide Engineering Firm Increases Backup Speed by 93 Percent and Reduces Backup Monitoring Time to Zero
• File-Level Recovery Speed Improves Dramatically for School District
• HAMA, Specialist of Multimedia Accessories, Relies on Veeam Backup & Replication for Ongoing Virtualization Plans
• Veeam Backup & Replication™ to Become Tyco Electronics’ EMEA Standard
• More case studies

Another interesting trend is what Google shows in the terms of interest in our brand. As you can see, Veeam continues to rise while Vizioncore continues to fall. Desperate? Maybe…

How Veeam is trending

Changed Block Tracking

Veeam has supported CBT for over 8 months starting with our 4.0 release back in October of 2009. With the first anniversary of vSphere behind us, we’re glad to see some of the last vendors finally catching up and utilizing this technology. There’s also been some discussion online recently about possible issues with CBT, rest assured that Veeam has you covered and in over 8 months of CBT support, none of our customers has run into this issue. For more information on this, please check out this thread in our forums that also includes information on obtaining a fix if you feel you’re exposed to this issue.

Object-Level Restore

Most of you have heard by now of Veeam’s plans around Veeam Backup & Replication version 5 that includes the technology known as SureBackup. One of the things that makes me so excited about the new capabilities is that we’re going to be able to offer Universal Application Item-level Recovery – we’re not just talking about Exchange or files, but any data from any application without an additional charge for each application. Other vendors are promising object-level restore but only for Exchange and only if you purchase an additional and very expensive software tool (per mailbox) from their parent company. And yes, they’ve been promising this for years.

Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS)

While other vendors try to make it seem like they’re the “thought leaders” when it comes to VSS, the truth is that Veeam has been leading the way in VSS for VMware backups for almost 2 years now. We knew early on that the only way to ensure proper VSS support was to write our own implementation and not rely on VMware to provide it for us.  Additionally, with our VSS implementation everything is done at run time, no need to deploy and maintain a VSS agent executable on every Windows VM. Their implementation:

This driver is implemented as an .exe file which can be added to Windows 2003 and 2008 guests.

You can check out any of these previous posts on VSS if you want to know who the real thought leader is when it comes to VSS support on VMware:

Veeam Backup 2.0

Is your backup really VSS aware?

VSS and VMware ESX: What your VMware backup vendor isn’t telling you

The Great VSS Debate

Active Block What?

Now we’ve heard about this new technology that one of our competitors claims greatly improves the speed of backups. What they’re not telling you is all the limitations of this technology and the fact that it only makes FULL backups faster. Since Veeam uses a proven synthetic backup approach we only require 1 full backup. Here are some other limitations of that patent pending technology:

1. No benefit in incremental backups (deleting NTFS data does not update disk content, so data blocks do not change and are not picked up by CBT in an incremental backup)
2. Limited to NTFS and basic disks
3. Limited to full ESX since it relies on the Service Console (does not work with ESXi)
4. Not supported on direct SAN backups utilizing the vStorage API for Data Protection (90% of Veeam customers use VADP)
5. Without built-in dedupe their “full” backups are still larger than Veeam’s.

Be Careful What You Read, It May be Paid for

I’ve seen some materials that are pointing to an analysis provided by a “pay for play” blogger. I’m not going to mention names or link to sites here because I’d rather not give anyone the traffic. My only advice here (and this goes especially for the VAR community) is to research any “independent” sources your vendor is quoting, there’s a good chance they paid for that analysis and those words.

And finally, consider this: what does it mean when a vendor promotes a survey of beta customers in which 39% of the participants claimed reliability was the most important NEW capability. If reliability is a new capability, then I understand why so many partners and customers have chosen and continue to choose Veeam Backup & Replication

So what does that mean for current customers? Will they get Standard or Enterprise if they’re current on maintenance? They answer is the choice is yours! Yes, for a limited time Veeam will be offering customers current on maintenance the choice of Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 Standard or Enterprise once it’s released. This means that all of our current customers can rest easy and know that they’ll have the option of getting all the great new Virtualization-Powered Protection features that will be released later this year. Of course anyone who’s not a current customer but purchases Veeam Backup & Replication by 18 June 2010 will also be eligible for this offer.

If you’re not familiar with the Virtumania podcast put on by Rich Brambley and Mark Farley, be sure to check out Episode 6: “The Mean Green Veeam Team”, also available on iTunes. Rich and Mark invited David Siles and myself on to talk a little about Veeam and the virtualization market in general. I made an announcement about this offer on the podcast (right around 6:12).

What’s the difference?

While the exact details of the release a still being worked out, the table below details functionality that we know at this time to be included in Standard and Enterprise. You can also register for the upgrade here (along with more details on the offer): http://www.veeam.com/go/free-enterprise-upgrade

Feature	Standard	Enterprise	Notes
Data Protection Modes
Backup
Replication			2-in-1: backup and replication for one price, in one cohesive solution; includes replica rollback and replication to/from ESXi
Hot VM copy			Facilitates ad hoc backups and migrations
FastSCP™			Integrates Veeam FastSCP, the #1 file management tool for VMware administrators, into the operator console
Architecture
vStorage APIs			Highly efficiency and “future-proof” solution that uses the vStorage APIs for Data Protection
Changed Block Tracking			Lightning-fast incremental backups to minimize backup windows and allow for more frequent replication
Multiple backup options			Back up directly from SAN, over LAN, with virtual appliance, or direct from target
Centralized control of distributed deployment			Includes Enterprise Manager, a web-based console that provides a consolidated view of your distributed deployment; includes federation of multiple backup servers, centralized reporting, and consolidating alerting
FastSCP			Leverages Veeam’s proven FastSCP engine
Synthetic backup			Eliminates the need for periodic full backups (provides “forever incremental” backup), thus saving time and space
SmartDedupe™			10x space savings on backup storage
SmartCDP™			Near-continuous data protection (near-CDP) at a fraction of the cost of traditional CDP
Instant File-Level Recovery
Windows
Linux
Other			Unix, Solaris, BSD, Mac
Indexing and Search
Windows guest file system indexing			Creates an index (catalog) of all Windows guest files that have been backed up
Search across backups	Current backups	All backups (current & archived)	Quickly search for guest files across backups
SureBackup™
Recovery verification	Manual	Automated
Advanced VSS support
Application-Item Recovery
Universal application-item recovery			OS- and application-agnostic object-level recovery for application administrators
User-directed recovery			Available for any application with a web front-end

What we’re talking about with verification has nothing to do with how we store our backups but everything to do with the virtual machines inside of our backups. Our synthetic backup approach is a proven technology that we did not invent, simply refined. Our source based de-duplication of data as well as removal of “empty” blocks has been proven for over 2 years in production environments. So if you think all of this buzz is just about verifying the integrity of the “backup file”, think again.

Some history

Veeam R&D did not initially set out to provide verification capabilities. We were actually doing research into how to provide functionality that our customers were asking for, namely application-item level recovery. Since we are doing image-level backups, how could we allow our customers to retrieve individual application items such as email, SQL, etc.? Some vendors recommend backing up data twice, once with an image-level product and again with a different agent based product (with specific agents for each application). This approach means 2 backup vendors (not integrated), resource contention on hosts and almost double your backup space…we knew there had to be a better way.

Building on our advanced file-level recovery capability we knew that if we could just start a recovered VM we could then start the application and pull out individual application items. In the past this was done by restoring the entire VM in an isolated network, a process that can take a considerable amount of time and effort for just 1 email. What if we could just run the VM from the backup file without having to extract it? R&D quickly got to work to see if this was even possible…

The Aha Moment

Sometimes in software development you start out to solve one problem and in the process realize that you can solve other problems, problems that no one ever thought could be solved. When was the last time you started a server running from a tape backup? When was the last time you verified the ability to successfully recover (and start) all of your servers that have been backed up (monthly? quarterly? yearly? never?)?

Veeam R&D quickly realized that they were on to something big here, what some call the “aha moment”…what if we could startup the VM’s directly from the backup file in an isolated environment just after the backup occurs? Could we actually give our customers peace-of-mind that their image level backups (which are simply crash consistent) would perform as expected if they needed to do a full recovery? The answer to those questions is “Yes we can”!

Verification

So that is how this whole verification idea came about, we wanted to provided item-level recovery and we ended up doing that as well as something thought impossible by many.

Verification is:

• Comprehensive – maintain dependencies across VM’s (email, directory, DNS) to provide the verification
• Flexible – allows custom scripts in verification jobs based on specific OS and application
• Fast – starts the VM’s, checks them and shuts them down…in minutes
• Non-destructive – No changes are made to what’s stored in the backup, the verification environment is fenced off from production
• Automatic – Once the jobs are created, they run on schedule
• Peace-of-Mind – once verified, you know you can recover the VM’s and they will work.

So when you think about verification, take the points above into consideration. Verifying the integrity of a backup file is easy, verifying the fact that the VM will work when it’s recovered? That’s not so easy…but it will be soon.

After 1 week, I can say that the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Of course I know all of you can’t wait to “try it out” for yourselves. The requests for beta participation have been coming in from all over the globe and while we will have a beta program, it will rolled out in phases to ensure we get the best feedback possible from those that can devote the time to trying it out in their environments. I did give a little hint on my recent podcast with Douglas Brown over at DABCC, take a listen here.

Below are some quotes as well as links to blog posts and articles about SureBackup. If I have missed anyone I do apologize, there’s a lot of great blogs and articles out there. If you want to be included, send me an email or send me a tweet.

http://lodev.name/2010/03/22/veeam-unveils-surebackup/

The most significant feature is called Recovery Verification. With this feature, backup operators can opt to automatically verify the integrity of each and every backup.
To enable this, VB&R includes an NFS daemon that presents the images on the backup pool as a regular NFS datastore to the ESX farm. VB&R automatically registers the virtual machines (in a fenced-off network) and tests if the backup is bootable. (And doesn’t get stuck in Safe Mode, for instance.) This mechanism is OS- and application independent.

http://www.virtuallifestyle.nl/2010/03/veeam-announces-surebackup/

Cool Stuff

It makes a cool solution for actually using your DR-site for the verify process. Just replicate the backups to the second site and do the verification there. As Lode Vermeien puts it: “So I can do cross-site backup and verify at my DR site? If so, bye bye SRM.. (for 90% of my customers, who can’t afford SRM in the first place)”. It does in fact differ hugely from SRM, as SureBackup does not require array-based replication.

http://virtualisedreality.com/2010/03/22/veeam-sure-backup/

No longer do you have to hope you backups are working in-between tests as they can be verified to be working not just valid every backup, the ability to be able to granularly restore elements from any applications by starting a VM from the compressed backup file. This also introduces lots of new possibilities for testing environments etc.

http://www.van-lieshout.com/2010/03/how-sure-is-your-backup/

Universal application-item recovery

This new technology enables you to recover any virtualized application. Because of the image level backup, it’s fully OS agnostic. No special backup agents are required. It doesn’t matter which OS or even which (custom) application you are running. You can just start your VM from a backup and retrieve the items you need. Because the complete environment is started, you can use the application’s native management tools.

http://technodrone.blogspot.com/2010/03/surebackup-by-veeam.html

One of the biggest issues Administrators have with verifying the validity of Backups of an OS is that when doing this you cannot only rely on the restore only of one restored system.

http://www.vladan.fr/veeams-secret-weapon/

This applies not only to individual VMs but also to for example to VMs like Exchange 2007 which needs Active Directory and DNS to work with.  All this “linked” servers must be “UP ” to be able to check your Exchange 2007 server is backed up correctly. So we might see those 3 VMs to be verified at the same time….. and declared consistent…

The new patent technology will be able to run VMs directly from compressed backup files. It’s OS and platform independent, without the need for an agent installed inside of a VM.  How your actual infrastructure has to be setup?

http://www.techhead.co.uk/amazing-new-vmware-backup-product-announced-veeam-surebackup

To me this all sounds too good to be true and I am going to be interested to see how quickly it will perform these VM backup verifications, along with how many it can do concurrently and whether this is just limited by the hardware on which you are running it on.  Veeam give an impressive example of the times we can expect to see:  An MS Exchange server VM with 156GB of storage only takes 2 minutes to verify – wow! Now that I look forward to seeing.

http://www.virtualization.info/2010/03/veeam-announces-surebackup-technologies.html

This goes well beyond the verification of integrity for a backup image that disaster recovery vendors usually do and it’s definitively an interesting way to leverage virtualization. Veeam will support it with any guest OS (not just Windows) and any application. It will even work with Backup & Replication 4.x archives.
But the company has some news about restore too.

Less innovative, but still a very welcome addition, SureBackup also comprises the capability to restore application-level items, like emails from an Exchange Server, users from an Active Directory LDAP server or records from a SQL Server.
Proper roles and permissions for each object will be recovered too.

http://infoworld.com/d/virtualization/veeams-surebackup-transforms-vmware-image-backups-315

The process is safe, and according to Veeam, it is also fast. As an example, Veeam said it was able to bring up a backup image of a 150GB Microsoft Exchange server with 200 mailboxes in less than two minutes. The key here is that this technology takes minutes rather than hours of manually trying to do the same functionality today.

http://virtualizationreview.com/blogs/the-hoard-facts/2010/03/surebackup-coming-soon.aspx

It all sounds good, and Veeam got some pretty good analysts to provide supportive quotes, so it would seem that the only remaining challenge is getting the word out ASAP.

As Hazelman puts it, “This is going to take some time for the market to absorb because it is so different.”

http://www.josemariagonzalez.es/2010/03/25/surebackup-nueva-manera-hacer-backups-vms.html

Llega SureBackup!

Creo que uno de los mejores valores de Veeam es el plantear cosas nuevas, con “pensamiento paralelo”, innovando y generando nuevas maneras de hacer las cosas. No es fácil, lo hicieron con la copia sintética decremental o inversa (siempre que la explico mis clientes asumen que es lógico, pero nadie lo había hecho antes.

Via Google Translate:

I think one of the best values of Veeam is raising new things, with “parallel thinking, innovating and creating new ways of doing things. It is not easy, it was with the synthetic copy decrement or vice versa (provided that I explain my customers assume that it is logical, but nobody had done before.

http://www.dpmworld.net/2010/03/24/veeam-surebackup-un-nuovo-modo-di-intendere-il-backup/

Recovery Verification è una soluzione pensata per verificare l’effettiva funzionalità di un backup a caldo di una macchina virtuale. I backup a caldo si appoggiano ai Volume Shadow Service di Microsoft, soluzione pensata per garantire la consistenza di un backup o di uno snapshot a caldo di una macchina virtuale. Sfortunatamente il VSS presuppone che le applicazioni siano VSS-aware: in caso contrario non viene garantita la consistenza. Tramite il Recovery Verification, Veeam vuole offrire un potente strumento in grado di avviare la macchina virtuale in un contesto separato dalla produzione per verificare non solo il corretto funzionamento del sistema operativo, ma anche (tramite appositi script) il funzionamento delle applicazioni installate.

English:

Recovery Verification is a solution designed to verify the functionality of a hot backup of a virtual machine. The hot backup will build upon the Microsoft Volume Shadow Service, a solution designed to ensure the consistency of a backup or a hot snapshot of a virtual machine. Unfortunately the VSS requires that applications are VSS-aware: otherwise there is no guarantee consistency. Through the Recovery Verification, Veeam will provide a powerful tool to start the virtual machine in an environment separate from production to test not only the proper functioning of the operating system, but also (through the provided script) the operation of installed applications.

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/stor/2010/032210stor2.html

Veeam verifies virtual machine recovery

Enhanced software tests recoverability of image level backups

http://www.quostarinsight.com/?p=63

The new feature included in Backup and Replication 5 answers a question which always sits at the back of IT managers  minds – ‘in an emergency can I recover from my backups?’ We all have our DR drills and undertake regular test restores and rebuilds in a lab. But on the whole, if the backup product says it was successful then we trust it.

Veeam are going to stop that niggling question for machines in your virtual environments forever. Backup and Replication 5 will not only backup your machines at the high speeds seen in version 4, but now also test those backups will boot for you. Now you know they are there when you need them in a crisis.

http://vmblog.com/archive/2010/03/22/veeam-transforms-vmware-image-level-backups-with-breakthrough-technology.aspx

Recovery verification is made possible by new patent-pending technology that allows a virtual machine to run directly from a compressed backup. By publishing the content of backup files directly to ESX hosts, Veeam eliminates the need to extract backup files, and the time and storage required to do so. The technology also includes automatic creation of an isolated test environment using available production, disaster recovery (DR) or lab resources. It supports any guest operating system and virtualized application.

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2259930/veeam-introduce-verification?page=1

The problem with virtual machine backups, according to Veeam, is that companies cannot be sure whether they have a valid backup unless it is extracted and run to ensure that the application is functioning properly.

http://www.newstatesman.com/technology/2010/03/backup-veeam-test-enables

Veeam has added new a new capability to its Backup & Replication offering that will enable companies to verify the recoverability of backups from VMware virtual machines. The company says that one of the issues with current backup and restoration technology is that there is no way of verifying whether a backup has been successful or not and whether the operating system and applications will start without errors.

http://vuemuer.pmiservice.biz/?p=1144

Effettivamente si tratta di una funzione veramente utile, non vedo l’ora di mettere le mani sulle prime beta della versione 5.0 di Veeam Backup, il prodotto che integrerà questa tecnologia.

Via Google Translate:

Indeed this is a really useful feature, I can not wait to get my hands on the first beta of version 5.0 of Veeam Backup, the product that will integrate this technology.

http://www.virtualizationpractice.com/blog/?p=4940

Veeam SureBackup can restore VMs on local systems, hot-site systems, or dedicated systems. VMs are restored into private virtual networks within specific resource pools so that your systems can be configured to lower the overall impact of restoration testing.

http://www.vmgu.ru/articles/veeam-surebackup-news (with some help from Google Translate)

Key components of the solution for backing up VMs on ESX server defined by the following exclusive benefits Veeam Backup:

• Самый лучший бэкап (работает быстрее всех, дедуплицируется эффективнее всех и может быть проверен на восстановление) The best backup (runs faster than anyone else, deduplitsiruetsya better all and can be checked for restoration)
• Самое лучшее восстановление (максимальная гранулярность до уровня приложений, восстановление файлов большинства ОС) The best recovery (maximum granularity to the level of applications, file recovery OS)
• Самая недорогая защита виртуальных машин с точки зрения катастрофоустойчивости (репликация от Veeam не требует больших вложений в отличие от VMware Site Recovery Manager) The most inexpensive protection of virtual machines from the standpoint of disaster-(replication of Veeam not require large investments, unlike VMware Site Recovery Manager)

http://news.techworld.com/virtualisation/3218037/veeam-claims-to-have-cracked-vm-backup-problem/?getDynamicPage

The company uses proprietary technology that, for the first time, allows a virtual machine to run direct from a compressed backup. By publishing the content of backup files direct to ESX hosts, Veeam said that it eliminated the need to extract backup files, and the time and storage required to do so. Hazelman said that the technology would work for any application that runs under VMware.

http://speicherguide.de/Magazin/StorageNews/tabid/114/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/12270/Veeam-SureBackup-veredelt-Vmware-Image-Backups.aspx

Der Backup-Prozess selbst muss nicht verändert werden

Zu der Technologie gehört auch die automatische Bereitstellung einer isolierten Testumgebung, die je nach Wunsch direkt in einer verfügbaren Produktionsumgebung oder auf Disaster-Recovery- bzw. dezidierten Testsystemen laufen kann. Es werden alle Gast-Betriebssysteme und virtualisierten Applikationen unterstützt. »Wir wollen nicht, dass Administratoren ihre Backups verändern«, betont Hazelman. »Aber wir geben ihnen jetzt die Möglichkeit, ihre Backups zu verifizieren mit dem eindeutigen Ergebnis: Ja, dieses Backup ist gut. Und wenn eine Virtuelle Maschine (VM) recoverd werden muss, dann startet sie ganz einfach, und hat keine Fehler.«

Via Google Translate:

The backup process itself does not need to change

To the technology include the automatic provision of an isolated test environment that can run directly to each request in a production environment or on available disaster recovery or dedicated test systems. It supports all virtualized guest operating systems and applications. “We do not want that administrators” change their backups, emphasizes Hazelman. “But now we give them the opportunity to verify their backups with the clear result: Yes, this backup is good. And if a virtual machine (VM) must be recoverd, it starts easily and has no errors. “

http://blog.vmote.net/?p=135

Watching the Veeam SureBackup webcast yesterday (25/03/2010) it was quite apparent they couldn’t be more on the flip side to a typical backup vendor approach. Everything about the SureBackup technology they’ve developed is focused on the verification and testing of your backups. So much so the virtual machines don’t even require a restoration to be tested. To me this says everything I need to know that this technology, the vendor wants you to use the backed up data and not forget about it until it’s too late.

And of course my favorite Tweet from last week (and a great article too):

wcpreston New blog post: Veeam is kicking ass and taking names w/their new SureBackup product: http://www.backupcentral.com/content/view/304/47/ Thu, Mar 25 14:19:34

“Wow – you guys are smart!”

“This is unique – it’s really cool. Very powerful.”

“I applaud you for this – this is a big push forward.”

“No one else is doing this!”

“This is very exciting stuff. You’re hitting on a need that’s currently not being met.”

“I wish I had had this a few years ago when I was in IT!”

“Leveraging the investment you’ve made in backups to do more”

Update: March 11, 2010 – “what you are doing is absolutely necessary and will take a lot of burden from a lot of people”

Update: March 15, 2010 – Here’s a Twitter quote from Chris Wolf at Burton Group

Update: March 16, 2010: Did 4 calls back to back this morning, here’s some select reactions:

“there’s never been anything like this before”

“Veeam is making several Leadership moves in the new paradigm of server virtualization and enabling organizations to do new things”

“Looks so simple… how come no one ever thought of this before”

“Current process is extremely expensive and time consuming… this is the answer”

Update March 17, 2010: Just one for today…

“I’m not a guy that’s easily impressed and you just impressed me”

Notice that I have not said who said the above, I won’t quote an analyst without their permission and of course they’re a bit vague too…but it’s not just us that’s excited about what we’re getting ready to release. We have many more analysts to talk to and I’m sure we’ll get more quotes, many of them may even show up in our press release with the analysts who said them.

Check back for updates!

SureBackup is NOT a new product. We’re using SureBackup to describe a set of features, some are new, some are already in place. We’re going to be introducing other terms as well that will include new features as well as existing ones. All of these features will be delivered as part of Veeam Backup & Replication version 5.0.

So why all the fuss about SureBackup? Because in my view, what we’re going to be introducing is truly the most exciting technology I’ve seen in the past 10 years. Will it change the way you look at VMware backups forever? I think so, but I’ll have to leave that up to you. In fact, there are many, many uses for what we’re introducing and I know we haven’t even thought of them all yet.

Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 is not a new platform, it won’t require a rip-and-replace for existing Veeam Backup & Replication 4.x customers. I’ve stated that before but I wanted to make sure everyone is clear on this as the last thing I want to do is prevent anyone from purchasing 4.x today.

While Veeam’s not going public until March 22, 2010, I do understand that our friends in the blogger community would like a “sneak peek” at what we’re announcing before the official announcement goes public.  To give people some time to write up their thoughts, I’m going to be hosting a special Blogger Briefing on Sunday, March 21. The intent here is to give those bloggers who are interested some advance information so that when we do go public on March 22 you will have had time to consider our new features. My current plan is 11AM but I can be flexible if that’s too early/late for people.

How do you sign up? You can reach me on Twitter or you can email me at doug /dot/ hazelman /at/ veeam /dot/ com. I’ll be sending out the details on the WebEx just before the meeting to those of you who ask to be included.

The following links are to blogs that have already mentioned our SureBackup announcement. If you’re blog is not on the list, send me a link and I’ll update this post.

Update – 1 March 2010 – Hint: “SureBackup – Removing the last obstacle of image-level backups”

http://www.vladan.fr/surebackup-what-new-upcoming-product-from-veeam/

http://virtualize.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/new-upcoming-product-from-veeam-surebackup/

http://virtualisedreality.com/2010/02/19/something-big-is-happening-at-veeam/

http://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/2010/02/19/veeam-something-big-is-coming/

http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1438-Veeam-SureBackup-The-countdown-has-begun.html

http://www.vmgu.ru/news/veeam-surebackup-announcement

So in looking around for solutions which best incorporated these new features I eventually came across Veeam. Utilising the thin provisioning feature to remove the overhead of no longer seeking out empty disk blocks and the unnecessary backing up of those empty blocks, Veeam also incorporates compression algorithms on the target backup device. Hence Veeam have a solution that not only reduces the amount of space used on the source host datastores but also the target backup storage device.

Of course WE believe that Veeam has the best solution for vSphere 4.0 and it’s good to see others out there recognize that fact. With Veeam Backup & Replication 4.1 not only do we fully support the vStorage API for Data Protection and the VDDK but we also fully support ESXi, for both Backup AND Replication. As I’ve been talking to partners over the past few weeks at VMware Partner Exchange and even our friends at Mirazon, they’ve indicated that Changed Block Tracking is perhaps the BEST reason customers should upgrade to vSphere 4 and our customers agree: Insane Backup Speed.

Veeam was also very happy to win Gold in SearchServerVirtualization’s Product of the Year for 2009, further proof that yes, Veeam Backup & Replication is the best backup solution for vSphere 4.

Finally, I’d like to address Archie’s final note in his post:

So while Veeam are currently leading the way, the time is certainly ripe for more third party APIs to be developed and incorporated making VM backup nightmares a thing of the past.

Of course we do face increasing competition in this space. I don’t want to start a comment war so I should mention that both EMC Avamar and Symantec Backup Exec 2010 do now have support for the vStorage API for data protection. Some of our other competitors have also “announced” support for CBT for so far it’s just been talk and no shipping product.

Does all this mean that Veeam is just taking a break to let our competitors catch up to us? Of course not! Over the next few months Veeam is preparing to change the way you think about backups…FOREVER! I can’t disclose anything yet, but watch this space, the countdown has begun!

UPDATE: In case you’re wondering, the next version of Veeam Backup & Replication will not require a complete reinstall/re-architecture. SureBackup is an entirely new feature that will easily integrate in with existing Veeam Backup & Replication installations.