Veeam Patented Technonoly for VMware Image-Level Backups

Veeam Software has developed patent-pending technology that removes the last obstacle to image-level backups: reliability. Veeam’s expanded SureBackup capabilities test and verify the recoverability of every backup of every virtual machine, and set a new standard for data protection and disaster recovery. The new capabilities will be available in version 5.0 of Veeam Backup & Replication, expected to be released in the third quarter of this year.

While virtualization and the advent of image-level backups have brought many advantages, one issue remains. Just because a backup job completes successfully does not mean the machine can be recovered and booted. Even if the integrity of the backup file is verified, there is no assurance that the operating system and applications will start without errors or that data will be intact. There are many possible issues, both procedural and configuration related, that can interfere.  The only way to be completely certain is to test and verify the recoverability of every backup. Until now, this was too expensive and time-consuming to be feasible. Veeam SureBackup eliminates these barriers and brings certainty to image-level backups.

"Most organizations periodically test backups of their most important applications, but this is expensive, time-consuming, labor-intensive and hit-or-miss," explained Ratmir Timashev, Veeam President and CEO. "We’ve developed technology that makes it possible to verify the recoverability of every backup in a matter of minutes. Not only does it allow organizations to embrace image-level backups to improve recovery time and recovery point objectives, it also enables them to comply more fully with ?reasonable measures? as required by internal and external regulations, such as HIPAA and SOX."

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.

"Historically, backup archive validation has provided assurances of backup archive file integrity, but not of the applications and data contained within the archive," said Chris Wolf, Senior Analyst, Burton Group. "Virtualization provides a gateway for innovative solutions to include validation of entire application stacks as part of the backup process. IT professionals no longer have to lose sleep wondering if critical data can be recovered, when they can leverage innovative solutions that validate the application integrity of each backup job."

In addition to SureBackup testing and verification, the new technology from Veeam enables other key capabilities, such as universal application-item recovery, and provides on-demand production replicas for system testing and troubleshooting.