Veeam accelerates VMware backups

Virtualisation specialist Veeam Software has announced version 4.0 of its Veeam Backup & Replication tool for VMware, which it claims will significantly speed up performance by taking advantage of new features in the vSphere platform, and adding a central management console.

Available immediately, the new version is the first backup tool to make use of the vStorage API features of VMWare's vSphere platform, such as thin-provisioned disks and changed block tracking, according to Veeam.

Customers on the beta test program for this release have reported that incremental backup and replication is 10 times faster than before, while full backup and replication processes are up to five times faster, the company said.

"We are taking the credit, but it is down to VMware's new features," said Veeam chief executive Ratmir Timashev.

The speed increase is due to the fact that Veeam can now see how much of a thin provisioned disk is actually used, and needs only to back up that much data instead of the entire specified capacity.

Meanwhile, changed block tracking lets the backup tool see immediately which parts of a virtual hard disk have changed, greatly speeding incremental backups.

"Before, we had to scan the whole disk to see what had changed, which can take as long as the backup itself. Now, VMware provides this information," Timashev said.

Changed block tracking also allows customers to implement near to continuous data protection of virtual machines, without the costs traditionally associated with such a system.

"Now it takes just minutes to do a backup instead of hours, so you can have near continuous data protection for a fraction of the cost of a real physical replica," said Timashev.

Also new is an Enterprise Management Server that lets an administrator control Veeam backup servers across multiple sites and data centres from one console, while delegating recovery to local IT staff.

"You can centralise backup of virtual machines, but the way you recover is different because of application dependencies. So if you need to recover your Exchange server, you give the job to Exchange specialists, if it's an Oracle server, you need to give it to Oracle specialists," Timashev explained.