Veeam Backup & Replication Combined With Some NetApp Products

Veeam Software, Inc. announced it is collaborating with NetApp, Inc. to create a new data protection solution for the modern data center to enable the ‘Always-on Business’.

Through this partnership, Veeam will integrate its Backup & Replication solution with NetApp Snapshot, SnapMirror and SnapVault.

Businesses require access to applications 24/7, from any place and any device, with no patience for outages or data loss. The result is the expectation and demand of an always-on, always-available business, challenging IT in a way to provide non-stop services. The partnership marks another milestone in Veeam’s ongoing mission to enable the ‘always-on business’ by providing data protection to the data center.

Veeam first took server virtualization, a technology of the modern data center, beyond its initial application of server consolidation and turned it into a transformative platform for data protection. Beginning with VMware and later with Hyper-V, Veeam provided data protection that ‘just works’ – introducing capabilities such as Instant VM Recovery, SureBackup automatic backup testing and recovery verification, and an On-Demand Sandbox that helps mitigating risks by providing a production-like environment for testing applications and updates before actual deployment into the data center.

Now, Veeam is transforming a second enabling technology of the modern data center – the storage array with hardware based snapshot capabilities – to make the always-on business a reality. Storage snapshots allow backups to take place during business hours without affecting production VMs, permitting a low RPO. In addition, the snapshots themselves are small, taking up relatively little space. But storage snapshots alone are not sufficient to provide the level of data protection that the data center requires.

This integration will bring together the low RPO enabled by NetApp Snapshot, which lets enterprise IT backup the production environment to other storage every 15 minutes with no impact on performance, and the low RTO capability enabled by Veeam Backup & Replication, whose Explorer for Storage Snapshots provides item-level recovery from NetApp Snapshots, SnapMirror and SnapVault. Backups directly from storage snapshots can be completed 20 times faster than they can with competing solutions, and the integration provides an efficient means to meet the 3-2-1 best practice of data protection by instantly storing one of the backup copies in SnapVault.

When NetApp is combined with Veeam, the integrated solution provides a level of data protection matching the requirements of the ‘always-on business’.

Combination of these two technologies includes two key capabilities:

• Backup from Storage Snapshots: Executes backup much faster with no disruption to the production environment, resulting in improved RPOs. Available in the Enterprise Plus edition of Veeam Backup & Replication.
• Explorer for Storage Snapshots: Enables recovery ranging from entire VMs to individual files and application items from snapshots in production storage. Available in all editions of Veeam Backup & Replication, including the Free Edition.

Data protection in the modern data center is beginning to depend on further integration of the key technology of the modern data center: virtualization. This solution provides customers with a deeper level of protection and availability.

“In an effort to control data protection costs, and to get more value out of their backup data, customers are increasingly looking at snapshots to increase their storage efficiency. NetApp is pleased that Veeam is working with us to bring greater value to our joint customers,” said AJ Mahajan, senior director, NetApp product management.

“Together, the collaboration creates an important milestone and a disruptive advance in modern data protection,” said Ratmir Timashev, CEO, Veeam. “Veeam was founded to leverage the core attributes of virtualization and yet again, we’re now transforming a key enabling technology for the modern data center, bringing additional value and capabilities to ensure that the most-critical services of our 100,000 customers remain always on and always available.“

The integration with NetApp Snapshot, SnapMirror and SnapVault will be included in Veeam Backup & Replication v8, which will be available in the second half of this year.