VMware Virtual Servers Get 5X Faster Shadow Copy With V2 of Veeam Backup

Virtualization systems management startup Veeam Software rolled out this week an enhanced version of its backup software for VMware servers.

The company released Veeam Backup 2.0, an improved version of the backup package it first introduced in February of this year.

Veeam Backup 2.0, which the company claims is five times as fast as the previous version, includes support for Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and allows the backup and recovery of applications such as Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server, that are VSS-aware.

VSS-aware applications use the technology to pause or put an application in save state so it can be backed up.

The new version also supports VMware Consolidated Backup for ESXi servers. This feature allows guests running on ESXi servers to have file-level recovery and full image restoration for ESX 3.0 servers.

While Veeam Backup 2.0 is designed to back up data to disk, it now also supports tape-based backup. With Veeam Backup 2.0, users can use scripts to automatically initiate tape backup when VMware backups finish.

In addition, the company has enhanced the reporting and notification capabilities of the product. Now real-time job statistics are available and e-mails will be automatically generated regarding backup job status, activity and performance.

Veeam Backup 2.0 competes with Vizioncore’s vRanger Pro and PHD Technologies esXpress. Unlike Vizioncore’s vRanger Pro backup package, Veeam Backup includes replication capability, in which point-in-time snapshots of data are taken. Vizioncore offers replication capability with a separate product, vReplicator. PHD esXpress 3.1 offers built-in replication.

Veeam Software was founded in 2006 to develop systems management software for VMware environments by president and CEO Ratmir Timashev and Andre Baranov, CTO, both formerly of Aelita Software, a company that was acquired by Quest Software. Since that time the company has introduced Veeam Reporter, which provides capacity planning and chargeback, Veeam Configurator, which manages configuration changes to VMware environments and Veeam Monitor, which monitors performance among virtual machines. The company has approximately 70 employees and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

Veeam Backup 2.0 is available through a series of resellers for $499 per server socket. A trial of the product is available here.