For data centers of today, virtualization is the key ingredient to have a cut above the rest. It helps in terms of cost and efficiency to have virtual machines run, over the legacy servers.
In the current times, virtualization comes as standard.
From file servers to critical applications and databases, which power the data centers of today, almost everything is virtualized.
Whenever there is a reference to virtualization, one name that stands out would be VMWare.
Veeam, is the most attached third-party solution, that is built primarily to backup VMWare data.
Veeam Backup and Replication delivers simple, flexible, reliable and powerful data protection.
This solution also helps eliminate downtime with instant recovery and keeps safe from cyber threats with native immutability and tested backup solution.
What is Veeam in simple term?
- A single platform for all workloads, application and data
- Software defined and infrastructure agnostic
- Instant recovery at scale
How does Veeam Software work?
- Ensures the most reliable ransomware protection
- Accelerates the move to a hybrid cloud solution
- Decreases cost and the complexity of the operation
Key Capabilities of the Veeam software
1. Data backup solution is being Fast and Secure
- Automate workload backup and discovery across the cloud, virtual, physical and NAS. This is useful for BCP and DR criteria.
- Image based backups that help the RPO and RTO for VMs and virtual hardware and OS snapshots.
- 100% software -defined and hardware-agnostic solutions for the complete flexibility.
2. Data Recovery using the backup solution is fast and proven for any scenario
- Service level agreements can be achieved with complete and reliable restores with instant recovery
- Full or item-based recovery of OSs, applications, databases, VMs, folders, objects and shares.
- Recover across multiple platforms and clouds with portable data format.
3. Cloud-Ready – Speed up your cloud adoption while reducing cost
- Centralized AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud- native backup solution and recovery.
- Policy based tiering of backup and archived data across object storage classes, much needed for the complex applications used the present day.
- AWS Key management service (AWS KMS), Azure Key Vault, – which automates the authorized entries of the software to process as programmed, immutability, helps keep ransomware out.
4. Data Security – Protect against ransomware and cyber threats
- End-to-End immutability right from the data center to the cloud for your backup solutions.
- Create malware-free backups – thanks to the automatic scans with trusted malware detection.
- Recover faster than paying a ransom and decryption of your data.
While we refer to the backup solutions all across, it is important to understand the process of backup and restore.
VMware backup refers to the process of copying data on a Virtual Machine, within a VMware environment to prevent loss of data.
We do know of some of the tools used for backup and restore: Veeam backup and Replication, Acronis Cyber backup, Thin ware backup, are some of the commonly known ones.
Some of the best practices while using the Veeam Backup:
Prefer the file based backup (VMDK) to Guest Operating System Backup
- Experts prefer to use the file based method to backup Virtual Machines
- The operation is fairly simple and does not impose any performance penalties on the target machine.
- It is extremely important for high throughput workloads like email servers, databases and applications.
Application consistent backups and VSS
- It is recommended to create an application-consistent backup while backing up mission critical VMs that run critical applications.
- This means you should pause applications, a method referred to as “quiescing”, and take measures to ensure that transactions are not lost during the backup solution’s process.
- In case of Windows, it is recommended to use the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), provided as a part of the VMWare tools to quience applications.
Related: What is Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)
Provide ample bandwidth and resources for backup
- Network bandwidth from the backup server to the backup targets
- Hardware resources on the backup servers
- Hardware resources on the backup targets
Do not use VM snapshots as Primary Backups
- They are very convenient when used to save short term copies of a VM. But they incur a serious penalty on performance.
- VM Snapshots require a lot of space and can become bigger than the original disk that is being backed up.
- Merging the snapshots back to the VM, is a slow operation and can negatively impact the performance on the machine.
Consider using vStorage APIs
- vSphere provides vStorage API, that provides programmatic access to a VMDK file for backup and restore.
- It gives us features like Chained block tracking incremental backups and de-duplication.
Veeam backups can take up huge amounts of storage space, and setting up on-premise storage infrastructure can be daunting.
Cloudian Hyper Store is an on-premise, enterprise storage solution that is certified for use in VMware environments, and enables easy scalability from hundreds of Terabytes to Exabytes to support any scale of backup data.
It is fully compatible with the S3 API. Hyper Store is used in demanding operator-scale deployments using VMware vCloud Director.
Exabytes Singapore offers VMWare superior performance cloud hosting backup delivered via high availability servers built using VMware.
Automated backup with Veeam, automatic failover and fault tolerance built in and a 24x7x365 support team of qualified and experienced engineers make it one of the best backup solutions to purchase for virtual machines.
With features like dynamic load balancing, live migration, high availability firewall security, scalability, security and fully managed backups, Veaam enables businesses to focus on their core competency and operations while taking care of data backups and securing business critical data in a safe, secure environment to be used on-demand whenever required.
With our cloud hosting backup plans with 50 GB disk space and 1 TB high speed data transfer, Exabytes Singapore offers some of the most affordable and reliable cloud backup plans in Singapore.
For more information on these areas, please visit us at VMware Cloud Singapore
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