NEW ORLEANS – In the wake of yet another disaster in the WannaCry ransomware attack, Veeam Software has announced a continuous data protection solution alongside the latest version of its flagship solution, Veeam Availability Suite v10.
The v10 upgrade includes new physical server and Network Attached Storage (NAS) support, native object storage support with broad cloud object storage support, and further availability in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, but the highlight is the new Veeam Continuous Data Protection (CDP). It allows for near-continuous replication of workloads in the cloud every 15 seconds, and is the key to providing that ‘Always-ON’ availability the company is striving for.
“Veeam’s vision is to provide always-on availability in any cloud across the board. Private, public, hybrid cloud – it doesn’t matter,” said Peter McKay, Veeam’s Co-CEO, on the main stage at VeeamON, the company’s annual conference.
The Veeam CDP solution is designed as a better option than the current system that uses snapshots to protect and backup workloads. The snapshot system was the first step in reducing the cost of doing disaster recovery. CDP will reduce that cost even more. It uses VMware vSphere API for IO filtering, allowing for that continuous replication to the cloud through setting policies that drive SLAs down to seconds instead of the 15 minutes apart that was seen using snapshots.
Veeam’s vice president of system engineering, Scott Lillis, used Hurricane Sandy as an example of what disasters could occur, and how CDP can help mitigate those events, when speaking with CDN.
“If you are based in the [North East] and your systems went down for four days, maybe the customers you have in that region would have some empathy,” said Lillis. “But, if you have customers in California, they may have heard about it on the news, but they aren’t really going to care. They aren’t going to stand their banking being down for half a week.”
“The point of tolerance for that sort of outage is growing smaller and smaller. You need to have a plan B, and [Veeam CDP] leaps that forward quite a bit. It allows everyone to have access to this type of technology that has been historically pretty expensive.”
Below is the full list of announcements made around the Veeam Availability Suite v10. It will be released later this year.
- Extends the availability platform to physical servers and network attached storage (NAS).
- Tier-1 applications and mission-critical workloads with Veeam CDP.
- Native object support that frees up primary backup storage with policy-driven automated data management, reducing compliance and long-term retention costs. Included is broad cloud object storage support with Amazon S3, Amazon Glacier, Microsoft Azure Blob, and any S3/Swift compatible storage.
- Veeam Availability for AWS, a cloud-native, agentless backup and availability solution that protects and recovers AWS applications and data by eliminating native AWS snapshots and improving recovery SLAs. It also uses instant recovery, granular file, and application recovery, and tackles downtime and data loss by decoupling data and storing backups independently from AWS infrastructure. It is delivered through a Veeam – N2WS partnership.
- Veaam Agent for Microsoft Windows is a reaction from the response partners had to the Veeam Agent for Linux announced in late 2016. It provides availability for Windows-based physical servers and endpoints.
Veeam Availability Suite v10, according to McKay, is the next big extension of the company’s platform, and expands the vision of appealing to any cloud.
In a nutshell, these announcements are designed to allow for digital transformation in any cloud a customer could possibly want.
“Veeam has a long history of trying to be agnostic. You see that on the storage side, and we are going that route with cloud as well,” John Metzger, Veeam’s vice president of global product marketing, told CDN. “Completing that vision, and being able to take your workloads and get them to wherever you need them to be, so that you and your users have access to them. If you have someone saying that they need to use Amazon, Azure, or an MSP’s cloud – whatever they need, there is that flexibility.”
Other announcements made include:
- Veeam Availability Console for migrating, managing, and protecting public clouds – AWS, Azure, and more – workloads, physical severs, and endpoints. Complete with a single pane of glass console, and will be generally available in Q3 after its ‘release candidate’ build was launched this week at VeeamON.
- VMware vCloud Director Integration with Veeam Cloud Connect Replication to reduce daily management and maintenance cost. ,Multi-tenant configuration by using vCloud for Disaster Recover-as-a-Service (DRaaS).
- Tape-as-a-Service (TaaS) for Veeam Cloud Connect Backups. Allows for partners to deliver additional ‘tape out’ services to help customers meet compliance requirements for archival and long-term retention. Air-gapped backups protect against ransomware or insider threats, and it acts as an additional layer of disaster recovery protection.
- Veeam Cloud and Service Provider Directory, a free online platform for Veeam customers and partners who are looking for a cloud or service provider in their area who offers services using Veeam products.