Overnight, we released v11a (Build 11.0.1.1261) of our flagship product, Veeam Backup & Replication. This is the first major update to v11 which was released back in February. While these a released a not touted as a major release, Veeam R&D team has delivered a lot of value in this release. Apart from dealing with over 2000 minor fixes and enhancements there are also major enhancements in the shape of platform supportability, additional performance and other significant new features. The bigger ticket items here include the ability to extend Veeam Backup & Replication to connect to Veeam Backup for GCP installs for remote awareness and management as well as direct restore to GCP, additional platform supportability including support for various VMware, Windows and Linux platforms and under the hood enhancements that have resulted in performance increases around our CDP functionality..

In a slight change of release strategy, v11a has been released as an early availability release build via the Veeam R&D Forums.

Early Availability Release
Veeam Backup & Replication 11a is currently in the Early Availability stage. This RTM build is fully supported by our Customer Support for production deployments. Until this version becomes generally available (GA) in October, you will only be able to download the bits from this KB article.

This shouldn’t discourage people downloading and installing this build, but as should be normal practice, ensure the correct change and testing procedures are in place before any production deployment.

Platform Integration and Support

Clearly for me, the biggest new platform support in v11a is for VMware Cloud Director 10.3 and again has been a well requested feature from our Cloud and Service Provider partners as lots of them continue to double down on the Cloud Management Platform. We also have added readiness support for VMware vSphere 7.0 U3 and the latest releases of VMware Cloud on AWS that interacts more with NSX-T.

We have added support for Windows 10 version 21H1 with readiness for Windows 11 as well as support for Windows Server 2022. Linux supportability grows stronger with a number of updated distributions supports Both for support for guest VMs, for the installation of Veeam Backup & Replication components, and for agent-based backup with the Agent for Windows and Linux which have also been updated and included in the release.

More Google Cloud Support

As mentioned in the first paragraph, one of the top line features of v11a is the release of the GCP Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication. This allows for awareness and operations of our Backup for Google Cloud Platform built directly in to the Veeam Backup & Replication console. This is a continuation of what we have been doing since the release of v10a last year with the AWS Plug-in. As we continue to enhance the platform services integration we will see even more interoperability between products which can be seen in with what is in Veeam Service Provider Console.

In addition to that there is also the much awaited Restore to GCP feature now built into Veeam Backup & Replication. With v11a, users can now restore image level backups created by any Veeam product directly to a Google Cloud VM for cloud restoration of any workload further extending our mobility messaging.

RedHat, Nutanix AHV and Kasten

I’ve previously blogged about our upcoming Backup for RHV and v11a sets up readiness for our fourth hyper-visor support. Speaking of hyper-visor support, v11a introduces some big enhancements for Backup for Nutanix AHV in the form of Instant VM Recovery which again expands our mobility messaging. In terms of Kasten K10 Kubernetes backup support, as part of Veeam Backup & Replication v11a, K10 will be able to leverage existing investments in backup infrastructure. The upcoming Kasten K10 v4.5 will be able to configure backups of Kubernetes clusters that leverage VMware persistent volumes to a Veeam Backup & Replication repository.

Core Feature and Engine Enhancements

The VeeamKB lists a number of other enhancements, but without question the biggest ones for me relate to CDP and Object Storage. I’ve pulled those directly out of the KB below:

  • Veeam Continuous Data Protect (CDP): improved performance and reduced CPU usage during the initial synchronization, added better monitoring and reporting for replication conveyor issues, added compatibility with a number of VMware Virtual Volumes (vVOLs) implementations, removed existing limitations on maximum I/O journal size for VMware vVOLs and VMware vSAN target storage.
  • Restore directly from Capacity Tier: when a restore process is initiated from backups stored in the Capacity Tier (using the Backups > Object Storage node), we will no longer read matching data blocks from the Performance Tier and instead use solely the data from object storage. This capability can be useful for performing periodic non-disruptive restore tests directly from the cloud without putting your Performance Tier into maintenance mode.
  • Object storage compatibility: to help object storage devices with limited scalability, you can again enable your backup jobs to use the 8MB block size to reduce the number of objects created. To make this option visible, create the UIShowLegacyBlockSize (DWORD, 1) registry value under the ‘HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication’ key on the backup server. Keep in mind that this option significantly increases incremental backups size and requires an active full backup to be activated.

There are also a number of Resolved issues (that are being added to) and v11a also includes fixes from all cumulative patches for the original v11 release.

Compatibility with other Veeam solutions

Note that this update also includes all fixes from cumulative patches for v11 found on this VeeamKB (https://www.veeam.com/kb4126) and the new ISO supersedes those patches. For installation of the upgrade ensure you are on version 9.5 Update 4b (build 9.5.4.2866) or later before upgrading. Not that you should, but if you are running earlier upgrades and need to upgrade, call support. After the upgrade, the build number should be 11.0.1.1261.

References:

https://www.veeam.com/kb4215
https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-replication-f2/current-version-t9456.html