At VMworld 2017 Veeam was announced as one of only two foundation Data Protection partners for VMware Cloud on AWS. This functionality was dependant on the release of Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 3 that contained the enhancements for it to interoperate with VMware Cloud on AWS locked down vCenter.
This week 9.5 Update has been listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide (VCG) for Data Protection.
In terms of what you now get in Update 3, there is little noticeable difference in the process to configure and run backup or replication jobs from within Veeam Backup & Replication. The VMware Cloud on AWS resources are treated as just another cluster so most actions and features of the core platform work as if the cloud based cluster was local or otherwise.
There were a few limitations that VMware have placed on the solution which means that our NFS based features such as Instant VM Recovery, Virtual Labs or Surebackups won’t work at this stage. HotAdd mode is the only supported backup transport mode (which isn’t a bad thing as it’s my preferred transport mode) which talks to a new VDDK library that is part of the VMC platform.
With that the following features work out of the box:
- Backup with In Guest Processing
- Restores to original or new locations
- Backup Copy Jobs
- Replication
- Cloud Connect Backup
- Windows File Level Recovery
- Veeam Explorers
I’m really excited where VMware takes VMware Cloud on AWS and I see a lot of opportunities for the platform to be used as an availability resource. Over the next couple of months I’m hoping to be able to dive a little more into how Veeam can offer both backup and replication solutions for VMware Cloud on AWS.
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