VMware

Veeam

Veeam Backup & Replication is a comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery solution. With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can create image-level backups of virtual, physical and cloud machines and restore from them. Technology used in the product optimizes data transfer and resource consumption, which helps to minimize storage costs and the recovery time in case of a disaster.

Veeam Backup & Replication provides a centralized console for administering backup, restore and replication operations in all supported platforms (virtual, physical, cloud). Also, the console allows you to automate and schedule routine data protection operations and integrate with solutions for alerting and generating compliance reports.

Main Features

Main functionality of Veeam Backup & Replication includes:

  • Backup: creating image-level backups of virtual, physical, cloud machines and backups of NAS share files.
  • Restore: performing restore from backup files to the original or a new location. Veeam Backup & Replication offers a number of recovery options for various disaster recovery scenarios, including Instant Recovery, image-level restore, file-level restore, restore of application items and so on.
  • Replication: creating an exact copy of a VM and maintaining the copy in sync with the original VM.
  • Continuous Data Protection (CDP): replication technology that helps you protect mission-critical VMs and reach recovery point objective (RPO) up to seconds.
  • Backup Copy: copying backup files to a secondary repository.
  • Storage Systems Support: backing up and restoring VMs using capabilities of native snapshots created on storage systems.
  • Tape Devices Support: storing copies of backups in tape devices.
  • Recovery Verification: testing VM backups and replicas before recovery.

Veeam Licensing

Instance Licensing

Socket Licensing

To work with Veeam Backup & Replication, you must obtain a license key and install it on the backup server. If you do not install the license key, the product will operate in the Veeam Backup & Replication Community (free) Edition. For more information, see Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition.

Veeam licenses Veeam Backup & Replication in two ways: per instance and per socket.

You can use both instance and socket licenses.

NOTE
Veeam Backup & Replication consumes licenses only to back up data. Backup restores do not require licenses. You can restore VMs and data no matter how many free licenses you have or how many VMs you are restoring.

Instance Licensing

    Veeam Backup & Replication can be licensed by the number of instances. Instances are units (or tokens) that you can use to protect your virtual, physical or cloud-based workloads.

You must obtain a license with the total number of instances for workloads that you plan to protect in Veeam Backup & Replication.

    Workloads that have been processed in the past 31 days are considered protected. Every protected workload consumes instances from the license scope. The number of instances that a workload requires depends on the workload type and product edition.

    This licensing model allows you to obtain a license with a certain number of instances without knowing in advance what types of workloads you plan to protect. When a need arises, you can revoke instances from a protected workload, and reuse them to protect other workloads regardless of the workload type.

    Veeam Backup & Replication keeps track of instances consumed by protected workloads. If the number of consumed instances exceeds the license limit, Veeam Backup & Replication displays a warning when you open the Veeam Backup & Replication console.

Mind the following:

  • VM templates are regarded as protected VMs and consume license instances.
  • VMs and NAS shares processed with backup copy and tape jobs are not regarded as protected VMs and NAS shares and do not consume license instances. These types of jobs provide an additional protection level for VMs and NAS shares that are already protected with backup jobs.
  • VMs processed by snapshot-only jobs are regarded as protected VMs and consume license instances. Veeam Backup & Replication will revoke instances from these VMs if you re-add a storage array to the backup infrastructure.

Socket Licensing

With the socket licensing model, Veeam Backup & Replication is licensed by the number of CPU sockets on protected hosts.

 A license is required for every occupied motherboard socket as reported by the hypervisor API.

License is required only for source hosts — hosts on which VMs that you back up or replicate reside. Target hosts (for replication and migration jobs) do not need to be licensed.

NOTE
If you use a socket license that was obtained for an earlier version of Veeam Backup & Replication, Veeam Software adds up to 6 instances free of charge to your license scope. You can use these instances to protect any type of supported workloads except VMware and Hyper-V VMs — they are covered by the licensed CPU sockets on virtualization hosts. If the number of licensed sockets is less than 6, you can use the number of instances that equals the number of licensed sockets. For example, if the number of licensed sockets is 5, you can use 5 instances. If the number of licensed sockets is 100, you can use 6 instances.

Protected Objects

With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can back up and restore the following objects:

  •    VMware vSphere VMs
  •    Microsoft Hyper-V VMs
  •    Nutanix AHV VMs (requires an additional plug-in)
  • Cloud VMs:
  •    AWS EC2 instances
  •    Microsoft Azure VMs
  •    Google Cloud VMs
  • NAS file shares.
  •  Physical machines. To back up machines running Windows, Linux or macOS operating systems, Veeam Backup & Replication uses backup agents installed on each computer. Veeam Backup & Replication operates as a centralized control center for deploying and managing Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows, Veeam Agent for Linux and Veeam Agent for Mac.

Also, you can use standalone backup agents and integrate them with Veeam Backup & Replication: Veeam Agent for Oracle Solaris and Veeam Agent for IBM AIX.

Protected Applications

Native functionality of Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to create application-consistent backups for:

  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • Oracle Database
  • Active Directory
  • Microsoft Exchange
  • Microsoft OneDrive
  • Microsoft SharePoint

Also, you can install the following additional tools:

  • Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365: for full protection of Microsoft Office applications.
  • Veeam Plug-ins for Enterprise Applications: for integration of Veeam Backup & Replication with Oracle RMAN, SAP HANA Backint, and BR*Tools.

Management and Reporting

Veeam Backup & Replication integrates with a set of solutions that provide reporting and management capabilities for enterprise environments:

  • Veeam ONE: a solution that enables real-time monitoring, business documentation and management reporting for Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V.
  • Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager: a management and reporting component that allows you to manage multiple Veeam Backup & Replication installations from a single web console.
  • Management Pack for Veeam Backup & Replication: a component that integrates Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure, services and jobs into Microsoft System Center Operations Manager.
  • Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator: a solution that orchestrates disaster recovery processes in VMware vSphere environments, supports one-click recovery for critical applications and sites, and provides features for documentation and testing.

Service Providers

If you are a service provider, you can use Veeam Service Provider Console to deliver Veeam-powered Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) services to your customers.

You can also use Veeam Backup & Replication to offer cloud repository as a service and disaster recovery as a service.