Tag Archives: Cloud Connect

VeeamON 2017 Wrap

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VeeamON 2017 has come and gone and even though I left New Orleans on Friday afternoon, I just arrived back home…54 hours of travel, transit and delays has meant that my VeeamOFF continued longer than most! What an amazing week it was though for Veeam, our partners and our customers…The announcements that we made over the course of the event have been extremely well received and it’s clear to me that the Availability Platform vision that we first talked about last year is in full execution mode.

The TPM team executed brilliantly and along with the core team and the other 300 Veeam employee’s that where in New Orleans it was great to see all the hard work pay off. The Technical Evangelist’s main stage live demo’s all went off (if not for some dodgy HDMI) without a hitch and we all felt privileged to be able to demo some of the key announcements. On a personal note, It was a career highlight to be able to present to approximately 2000 people and be part of a brand new product launch for Veeam with Veeam PN.

From a networking point of view it was great to meet so many new people and put faces to Twitter handles. It was also great to see the strong Veeam Vanguard representation at the event and even though I couldn’t party with the group like previous years, it looked like they got a lot out of week, both from a Veeam technical point of view and without doubt on the social front…I was living vicariously through them as they where partying hard in New Orleans.

VeeamON Key Announcements:

Availability Suit 10

  • Built-in Management for Veeam Agent for Linux and Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows
  • Scale-Out Backup Repository — Archive Tier
  • NAS Backup Support for SMB and NFS Shares
  • Veeam CDP (Continuous Data Protection)
  • Primary Storage Integrations — Universal Storage Integration API
  • DRaaS Enhancements (for service providers)
  • Additional enterprise scalability enhancements

For me, the above list shows our ongoing commitment to the Enterprise but more importantly for me working on enhancing our platform so that our Veeam Cloud and Service Providers can continue to leverage our technology to create and offer cloud based Disaster Recovery and Backup services.

Product Announcements and Releases:

I have been lucky enough to work as the TPM lead on Veeam PN and I was extremely excited to be able to demo it for the first time to the world. I’ve written a blog post here that goes into some more detail around Veeam PN and if you want to view the main stage demo I’ve linked to the video in the last section…I start the demo at the 29th minute mark if you want to skip through.

vCloud Director Cloud Connect Enhancements:

As mentioned above we have enhanced core capabilities in v10 when it comes to Cloud Connect Replication and Cloud Connect Backup. Obviously, the announcement that we will be supporting vCloud Director is significant and one that a lot of our Cloud and Service Providers are extremely happy with. It just makes the DRaaS experience that much more complete and when you add that to the CDP features in the core platform which will allow for sub minute RPO’s for replica’s it firmly places Cloud Connect as the market leader in Replication as a Service technologies.

We also announced backup to tape features for Cloud Connect Backup which will allow Cloud and Service Providers to offload long term backup files to cheaper storage. Note that this isn’t limited to tape if used in conjunction with a Virtual Tape Library. Hopefully our VCSP’s can create revenue generating service offerings around this feature as well.

VCSP Council Meeting:

On Thursday, our R&D leads met with a select group of our top Cloud and Service Provider partners over a three hour lunch meeting which could have gone all day if time permitted. It was great to be on the other side of the fence for the first time and hear all the great feedback, advice and suggestions from the group. It’s encouraging to hear about how Veeam Backup & Replication had become the central platform for IaaS, Cloud Replication an Backup offerings and with the v10 enhancements I expect that to be even more the case moving forward.

Main Stage Recordings:

Wednesday and Thursday morning both saw main stage general sessions where we announced our new products and features along with keynotes from Sanjay Poonen and Mark Russinovich as well as co-CEO Peter McKay and co-founder Ratmir Timashev. They are worth a look and I’ve posted links to the video recordings below. Note that they are unedited and contain all change overs and wait times.

https://www.veeam.com/veeamon/live

Press Releases:

Veeam Vault #6: Pre VeeamON 2017 Edition! New Logo, Update 2, VAW and Vanguard Roundup

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Time flies quickly when you’re having fun! VeeamON 2017 kicks off in New Orleans kicks off in just a few days and to say that it’s been a hectic period for the Technical Product Marketing Team and anyone at Veeam involved with VeeamON would be an understatement. All the hard work being done behind the scenes should result in a brilliantly executed event and there is going to be a lot on offer in terms of content, product announcements, learning and networking opportunities during the event. I would encourage everyone going to make sure you attend all three (one partner only) General Sessions to hear about how Veeam will continue to innovate and deliver around our Availability vision.

In this Veeam Vault I am going to round up some of the blogging content around VeeamON 2017, briefly talk about Backup & Replication 9.5 Update, the RTM of the Agent for Microsoft Windows and finish with a Veeam Vanguard Blog Post roundup since the last Veeam Vault edition.

For those attending VeeamON next week, see you there!

New Logo:

For those that hadn’t notice Veeam has rebranded and produced a new logo. Most, if not all of our public facing sites have been updated to reflect the new branding and even though I now have to throw out a number of relatively new polo shirts, I am a big fan of the new logo.

Update 2 and Agent for Windows:

A couple of weeks ago we released RTM builds of Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 2 as well as Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows. GA isn’t far away so if you are a Veeam Cloud and Service Provider and haven’t upgraded to the RTM build yet you are probably behind the eight ball in terms of being in a position to support VAW for when it does GA. Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows represents a massive opportunity for our VCSPs to tap into a market that was previously not accessible…this being, physical severs and workstations, workstation endpoints and more significantly cloud based Windows instances…all of which can now be backed up to Cloud Connect Repositories.

VeeamOn 2017 Blog Roundup and Mobile App:

A number of my team mates have written veeam.com blog posts about what to expect at VeeamOn this year and they are well worth a read. I, myself wrote a post last week where I listed my top sessions for 2017. Check out the posts below to get even more info on happenings at VeeamON.

Speaking of sessions and session registration, if you haven’t downloaded the VeeamON app for IOS or Android, scan the QR codes below or search for VeeamON in the App Stores:

There is also an online version of the app which can be found here.

Veeam Vanguard Blog Post Roundup:

VCSP Important Notice: 9.5 Update 2 RTM Is Out…With Remote Access and more!

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Last Friday, Veeam made available to our VCSP partners the RTM of Update 2 for Backup & Replication 9.5 (Build 9.5.0.1038). Update 2 for Backup & Replication is what we term a breaking update, meaning that if a Cloud Connect client upgrades from the 9.5 GA (9.5.0.711) or Update 1 (9.5.0.823) this will break backup or replication functionality. With that in mind the RTM has been made available for our VCSP partners to ensure it is installed and tested before being pushed out to production before the GA release. Veeam Backup & Replication releases from 8.0 (build 8.0.0.817) can write backups to a cloud repository on 9.5 Update 2, and any release from 9.0 (build 9.0.0.902) can write replicas to a cloud host on 9.5 Update 2.

Update 2 is a fairly significant update and contains a number of enhancements and bug fixes with a lot of those enhancements aimed at improving the scalability of the Backup & Replication platform that VCSPs can take advantage of. The biggest and most anticipated update is for the support of the upcoming Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows, but we also pushed out an awesome feature for our VCSPs to help manage their client or tenant Cloud Connect jobs or in fact manage their remote Veeam Backup & Replication instances with Remote Access.

VCSP and Cloud Connect Features and Enhancements:

Below are the main VCSP related features and enhancements included in Update 2. For a full list, head to the Veeam Cloud and Service Provider channels of the Veeam forum. For VCSPs with more than 300 connections there is a post regarding tweaks for improving performance at scale.

Core

  • Veeam Backup Remote Access: Full remote management of Veeam Backup & Replication installations at customer sites with a Veeam backup console or Microsoft RDP client over the existing Cloud Connect tunnel.
  • Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows integration: Full support for Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.0, including direct backup to a cloud repository backed by Veeam Cloud Connect. This includes the introduction of separate workstation and server counters for Cloud Connect Backup
  • Usage reporting enhancements: Usage reports are now saved in two formats, CSV and PDF.

Cloud Connect

  • Major scalability improvements: In light of support for direct agent backups, numerous optimizations to the Cloud Connect framework on both the service provider and the tenant sides have been introduced to significantly increase its scalability (including number of concurrent tenant jobs per Cloud Connect server) and reliability large at scale. The release was tested with 1000 concurrent agent backups per single Cloud Connect instance. Reaching this number may require applying additional tweaks, please refer to this post for more information.
  • Improved reporting and monitoring: Better visibility from the service provider side into Cloud Connect tenant jobs, including current job activity and statistics such as current rate and amount of data sent and received.

Cloud Connect Replication

  • Improved failback performance: Failback to the original location can now optionally leverage VMware changed block tracking information, instead of scanning the entire VM disks to determine the difference, improving failback performance up to 20 times.
  • Hardware plan enhancements: Added the ability to increase a number of networks assigned to the Hardware Plan after it has been created.

Important Note for Veeam One Users:

As mentioned in the VCSP forum digest this week, there is a patch available for Veeam One which enables compatibility with Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 2. This hotfix must be deployed to any Veeam ONE server that is monitoring Cloud Connect services…it doesn’t need to be installed on instances not monitoring Cloud Connect services.

Conclusion:

Once again, this is an important update to apply for VCSPs running Cloud Connect services in preparation for the GA release which will happen in about two weeks. Once released I’ll link to the VeeamKB for a detailed look at the fixes but for the moment, if you have the ability to download the update do so and have it applied to your instances.

Veeam Cloud Connect Backup: What are Subtenant’s?

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When Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 was released, there where a lot of significant features added to enhance Veeam Cloud Connect Backup and Replication. One of the lesser known features that came out in 9.5 was the addition of Cloud Connect Subtenants. This in effect was a pre-seeded feature for our Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows that went into public beta earlier in the year and is set to GA sometime in Q2 of 2017.

Subtenants can be configured by either the VCSP or by the tenant consuming a Cloud Connect Backup service. Subtenants are used to carve up and assign a subset of the parent tenant storage quota. This allows individual agents to authenticate against the Cloud Connect service with a unique login allowing backups to Cloud Repositories that can be managed and monitored from the Backup & Replication console.

End users on the tenant side can connect to the SP and create backups on the cloud repository under the tenant account. However, it is recommended to provide every tenant-side user with a separate subtenant account. In this case, the tenant or SP can allocate storage resources on the cloud repository individually for every subtenant so that subtenants’ data is stored in the cloud in an isolated and segregated way

Note that a subtenant account can not be used to connect directly to a Cloud Connect Service Provider from the Backup & Replication console and is only intended for use with the agents. If you try to do that you will see the error below:

As a Veeam Cloud Service Provider offering Cloud Connect Backup services it’s important that if not done so already…start wrapping your heads around the subtenant construct and how it works with Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows (currently in beta) as you want to be in a position to take advantage of them for when Veeam Agent for Windows does go GA.

Stay tuned to veeam.com for more blog posts around the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows ability to backup to Cloud Connect repositories using subtenants and also keep an eye out on my fellow team member, Clint Wyckoff’s blog cdubhub.us for some great upcoming content around all things Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows.

References:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/cloud/cloud_connect_subtenants.html?ver=95

World Backup Day …We should be thinking Availability #WAD

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Yesterday (30th of March) was Veeam’s World Availability Day. This is a day that Veeam has declared to make people aware about how availability plays a part in all organizations as an extension of Backup and Replication. In it’s self, WAD is a marketing initiative from us here at Veeam that backs onto World Backup Day…which is happening today (31st of March).

Veeam celebrates World Availability Day in recognition of the fact that for modern businesses and service providers, it’s not only about having backups of data anymore, it’s about being Available. Veeam helps organizations of any size and shape to achieve Availability for both their virtual and physical infrastructures, as well as provide data protection solutions in the cloud, whether private, public or hybrid.

World Backup Day focuses around Backup but you can’t forget that replication plays a critical roll in organizations ensuring they are covered for disaster with low recovery times via RaaS and DraaS service offerings. Cloud Connect Replication offered by our Veeam Cloud and Service Providers offers industry leading replication platform and all Veeam customers can take advantage of Cloud Connect as it’s baked right into the core Backup & Replication product.

For those not aware, Veeam has a Find a Veeam Cloud Provider Directory that lets you search for any of our listed VCSPs based on criteria that is relevant to your backup or replication needs.

https://www.veeam.com/find-a-veeam-cloud-provider.html

More on Veeam Cloud Connect Replication:

Advanced image-based VM replication through Veeam Cloud Connect is simple to set up and easy to use through a VCSP and is as easy to setup as going to the Service Providers menu in the Veeam Backup & Replication console and choosing your service provider of choice. Once set up you have access to hardware plans that provide compute, storage and networking resources at the service provider end to which you can configure cloud replication jobs and manage failover scenarios by way of failover plans.

When looking at disaster recovery testing and failover, one of the biggest challenges is in the networking. Generally speaking, there is complexity that surrounds ensuring VM replicas that are brought up at a disaster recovery site have the right networking in order for their applications and services to work. With the Network Extension Appliance, the tenant has the ability to map the internal VM networks as well as configure and publish external services to ensures seamless transition to the VM replicas during a failover.

Veeam Cloud Connect Replication

Data protection and disaster recovery tasks targeted at the cloud host are performed by tenants. Tenants can set up necessary replication jobs and perform failover operations on Veeam backup servers deployed on their side. Tenants can perform the following operations:

  • Replicate VMs to the cloud host
  • Perform failover tasks with VM replicas on the cloud host
  • Full site failover, when all critical production VMs fail over to their replicas on the cloud host in case the whole production site becomes unavailable
  • Partial site failover, when one or several VMs become corrupted and fail over to their replicas on the cloud host
  • Perform failback tasks with VM replicas on the cloud host.

Tasks associated with full site failover can be performed either by the tenant or by the service provider or through a Cloud Connect Portal hosted by the service provider that offers failover/failback operations. This flexibility allows the service provider to test the full site failover process and switch tenant’s production site to the cloud hosts upon request in the case that the tenant has no access to the backup infrastructure after a disaster. Ensuring that failover from the replica VM is successful is critically important, but there should also be a way back to access the on-premises infrastructure. Cloud Connect Replication features an option to easily failback to the primary infrastructure, by copying only data blocks changed while replica VMs were running on the service provider infrastructure.

Reminder: Veeam and its partners are giving away $200 MILLION in Cloud services ($1,000 USD per customer)!

Veeam and its VCSP partners are giving away $1,000 in FREE Cloud Services to each and every one of our +230K customers using Veeam Availability Suite, Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup Essentials.

Because of this unprecedented offer, right now is the BEST TIME to try backup and DRaaS in the cloud. You can avoid the cost and complexity of building and maintaining your off-site infrastructure while meeting business and regulatory requirements for off-site backup and DR.

Visit the FREE Cloud services promo page to learn more about this offer.

Cloud Connect Replication Partial Failover – Example

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Veeam Cloud Connect Replication has been part of Veeam’s Backup & Replication product since version 9 was released in early 2016 and like Cloud Connect Backup before it, Replication is starting to get traction in the market due to it’s ease of use, intuitive interface and best of breed disaster recovery networking technologies that are all baked into the core Backup & Replication product.

Without doubt one of the best/little known features of VCCR is the partial failover. Most disaster recovery scenarios focus on the total failure of all systems due to natural events or localised datacenter issues however the most common outage occurs at an virtual machine or instance level…this is generally an issue with the application or the operating system. With that, the ability to failover a single VM at a time is an often overlooked feature when looking into replication and disaster recovery platforms.

Veeam provides partial failovers within Cloud Connect Replication and once a VM has a replica copied up to the cloud provider you have the ability to perform a partial failover. I’ve created a video showing the process involved to initiate a partial failover which starts the VM replica up in the cloud providers hosting platform and then creates a L2 Tunnel via Network Extension Appliances that are deployed at the production and cloud ends. For an explanation of the Network Extension Appliance click here. Without diving into the specifics of what’s happening underneath the surface the NEAs talk to each other via the Cloud Connect Gateway and bridge the layer 2 network providing layer 3 access so that the replica VM that’s been partially failed over can communicate with VMs on the production network and vice versa.

This effectively means services and applications will be available over the internet without the need to employ expensive WAN connectivity mechanisms…the NEAs do all the work for you. In the demo video I am simulating the failure of a VM that hosts a WordPress site. That VM is brought up at the cloud providers end and, as can be seen in the video is shown to be running in a failed over state. From there I trigger a failback which replicates any changes made at the cloud end during the failover state back to the production site on premises. Once I am happy I commit the failback and the VM resumes normal operations on-premises.

The uptake of Cloud Connect Replication through Veeam’s VCSPs has been steady and we are seeing the number of replication VM licenses reported gather pace and grow month on month. As the Backup and Disaster Recovery markets mature I fully expect Cloud Connect to be a central part of our customers 3-2-1 rule of backup and availability with Cloud Connect Replication becoming the best of breed Replication/Disaster Recovery as a Service offering in the market.

References:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/cloud/cloud_connect_partial_site_failover.html?ver=95

Veeam Vault #5: $200 Million Give Away, VCSP Roadshow Plus Vanguard Blog Updates

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Welcome to the fifth edition of the Veeam Vault and the second of 2017. It’s been a busy four or so weeks for me since the last update preparing for a number of event’s and webinar’s happening over the next month all focusing on Veeam’s Cloud Business. In this Veeam Vault I am going to talk about an exceptional new promotion that Veeam is running to help drive increased adoption of Veeam Cloud Connect, talk briefly about the ANZ VCSP Roadshow and post a round up of all Veeam Vanguard blog posts since the last update.

Cloud Connect $200 Million Free Cloud Services:

On Valentines day we made public an amazing promotion that Veeam through it’s partners will be giving away $1000 in free cloud services to all existing veeam customers powered by the Veeam Cloud & Service Provider community.

 

This shows just how serious we are about ensuring our customers get the most out of our availability solutions by activating Cloud Connect Backup and Replication services that are included with all Veeam Backup & Replication licenses. A few weeks in and the program has been well received and I am looking forward to this rolling out across EMEA and ANZ over the next few months. For more information about the promotion and information on Cloud Connect Backup and Cloud Connect Replication have a read of my veeam.com Blog Post here.

ANZ VCSP Roadshow 2017:

Last week in Perth we kicked off the ANZ VCSP Roadshow for 2017…this has become an annual event hosted by Veeam ANZ and aims to encourage growth in the VCSP program by presenting to new or existing VCSP partners around Veeam’s Availability Platform that’s anchored by Cloud Connect technologies. If you are in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland or Adelaide there is still time to register here.

VeeamOn 2017:

VeeamOn 2017 is fast approaching but Veeam is still giving away certification, tickets, flights and accomodation to this years event in May. Our latest competition is a based around our VMCE certification and if you click on the link below you will be taken to the landing page where you need to take a quiz to enter the competition.

Propel your personal career by joining us in New Orleans for a training experience with cutting edge Veeam instructors and complete your VMCE certification. If you are already a VMCE, attend the brand new VMCE-Advanced: Design & Optimization v1.

Take the quiz to win a fully paid trip by taking this quiz by March 20th.

You can register here or you can:

Veeam Vanguard Blog Post Roundup:

Veeam Vault #4: Product Updates, Agent for Windows Beta Plus Vanguard 2017

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Welcome to the fourth edition of my Veeam Vault series and the first for 2017. It’s been a busy first month of 2017 with trips to Orlando where I attended my first Sales Kick Off where I also presented at our SE Training and then a trip to Russia to visit our R&D, Product and QA teams. Covering nearly 42,000KMs and going literally around the world, it was a long but worthwhile trip and has me extremely enthusiastic about the year ahead here at Veeam.

In this Veeam Vault I am going to talk about four new product builds that have been released since the last Veeam Vault and I’ll also talk a little about the Veeam Vanguard program…of which we announced the 2017 members overnight. As usual there will be the roundup of what the Veeam Vanguard’s have posted recently on their blogs but first i’ll talk about the new public BETA that we released on the 26th of January.

Veeam Agent for Windows BETA:

I’m very excited about this product…in fact I’m excited about all of our products that take advantage of Veeam Cloud Connect and VAW is no exception. With the ability to backup physical or virtual Windows endpoints to a Cloud Connect Backup repository the door opens up for a new stream of revenue for VCSPs and in combination with the yet to be released Veeam Availability Console offer a great solution for backing up previously untouchable workloads on physical servers as well as being able to do granular file level backups of any compatible Windows workstation and back them up locally, over a network share, over to a VBR repository or up to a Cloud Connect Repository.

The BETA is available via this registration page, so please download it and try it out and post any feedback in our forums.

Update 1 For VBR, One and Backup for Office 365:

A couple of weeks ago we released Update 1 for Backup & Replication, One and Backup for Office 365. As I wrote in this post focusing on how the latest release offers support for vSphere 6.5 it was more than just a standard update and offers over 300 enhancements and bug fixes that improve on the already strong reliability and scalability of the product. Veeam One also got a significant update and added support for vSphere 6.5 and also including new Hyper-V and reporting enhancements on top of a number of resolved issues. Backup for Office 365 gets a number of enhancements and bug fixes as well and, as with all the Update 1 releases are essential downloads to continue to improve on the already strong product sets.

Veeam Vanguards 2017:

As mentioned in the intro, Rick Vanover sent out new and renewed Vanguard’s their welcome emails overnight and this year we have 62 members at last count and as a former member of the Vanguard’s I can tell you that we, in the Technical Product Marketing team are looking forward to helping the 2017 crop get the most out of the program. I’ve blogged previously about the Vanguard program and now, with it entering it’s third year of operation I can truly say that it’s one of…if not the best vendor advocacy programs in our industry. The people involved on both sides are truly passionate about Veeam and the sense of community is something that I haven’t experienced in any other program. So well done to the 2017 class and hope to catchup with you all throughout the year are VeeamOn and any other event where we may cross paths.

Veeam Vanguard Blog Post Roundup:

VeeamOn 2017:

Lastly a final reminder that the Call for Presentations is still open to those looking to submit a session at the event. This is a great opportunity to share you insights and experiences that you have gained in and around Veeam software solutions and don’t forget that if selected, presenters will receive a complimentary VeeamOn registration pass along with travel and hotel accommodations. Head to the site below to submit an abstract before February 7, 2017.

https://www.veeam.com/veeamon/submit-your-abstract

VCSP Important Notice: 9.5 Update 1 Is Out…With vSphere 6.5 Support!

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Last Friday, we at Veeam made available for download Update 1 for Backup & Replication (Build 9.5.0.823), Veeam One (Build 9.5.0.3254) as well as for Backup for Microsoft Office 365 (Build 1.0.0.912). What was slightly unusual about this release for our VCSP partners is that there was no RTM build before GA…this is because Update 1 for Backup & Replication is what we term a non breaking update, meaning that if a Cloud Connect client upgrades from the 9.5 GA (9.5.0.711) to Update 1 (9.5.0.823) this would not break any backup or replication functionality.

Update 1 is a fairly significant update and contains over 300 enhancements and bug fixes with a lot of those enhancements aimed at improving the scalability of the Backup & Replication platform that VCSPs can take advantage of. The biggest and most anticipated (and by far requested) update is for the support of vSphere 6.5…as you can see below there are a number of specific enhancements in this build aimed at 6.5 features:

  • Encrypted VMs Support
  • VMFS6 Support
  • Virtual Hardware Version 13 support
  • NBD Compression
  • New Guest Interaction API Support
  • New VM Tag API Support

Of most importance to me is to point out the fact the clients can now replicate in Virtual Machines with VM Hardware Version 13 meaning that you should get your production replication clusters up to ESXi 6.5 as soon as possible to avoid clients getting errors such as the one below:

This does pose an interesting problem for VCSPs offering Cloud Connect Replication as it represents a situation whereby holding back on vSphere upgrades could mean that clients (who are more likely to have less roadblocks to upgrade) can’t replicate newer VMs created on 6.5 into the VCSPs Replication Cluster. The workaround is to make clients aware that only specific Hardware Versions are supported for replication however it might be expected that providers offering these services are not bound by these limitations. This becomes an architectural/business discussion around separating IaaS vCenter’s from Replication vCenter’s …but that is a topic for another day.

For the moment, regardless of your underlying vSphere versions it’s worth planning the upgrade to Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 1 as soon as possible as it contains a number of enhancements beyond the ones listed above and some minor fixes for Cloud Connect.

For a full list check out the release notes below and download the update here.

References:

https://www.veeam.com/kb2222

 

 

Veeam 9.5 – RTM Build Available for VCSPs

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Last week (we at) Veeam dropped the RTM build of Veeam 9.5 to it’s Cloud Service Provider partners. As a VCSP partner you need to be ready for the v9.5 GA date (at this stage set for mid November) to ensure that any keen early adopters who have Cloud Connect services with providers are able to backup and replicate without issue. VSCPs should upgrade their Veeam B&R 9 platforms to v9.5 as soon as possible.

To start with it’s best to have Veeam B&R updated to the latest patch release which is Update 2 Build 1715 and before upgrading to v9.5 it’s best to restart all Veeam services or better yet reboot the Veeam Management Servers…as an extra measure before beginning the upgrade you should disable all jobs and call an outage window so that your customers can pause their jobs.

If you have Enterprise Manager installed you will need to upgrade that first…notice below that the only available option is to upgrade Enterprise Manager.

screen-shot-2016-11-03-at-12-32-16-pm

This is a very easy upgrade and there isn’t really any gotchyas to get from v9 to v9.5 and the following components will be upgraded.

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As this is a point release you will not be asked for a new license and the installer will detect the current license as shown below.

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Next, dependancies will be checked and you will be able to install any that are missing.

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Once Completed you now have the option to upgrade Backup & Replication. Running through the next next install you get prompted again for the license and the service account password and get warned that the database will be updated.

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Once done you are set to update the Cloud Connect components via the updated console interface. On first login it will prompt you to upgrade all components to the their respective 9.5 versions. Any Cloud Gateways, Veeam Proxies, Repository Servers and Network Extension Appliances will be upgraded.

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To validate the install and make sure everything is working as expected when its comes to Cloud Connect you should run a test job and make sure it goes through without issue. With full v9 backward compatibility Cloud Connect is ready for the GA release. Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks as I run through the best new features of Veeam 9.5 for VCSPs…there are significant new features and enhancements that extend the platform for VCSPs to take advantage of and offer more services to customers.

Veeam Forums:

I would encourage all VCSPs to keep track of what’s happening in the Veeam Cloud & Service Provider forums as there are already a number of useful posts in there related to the RTM.

https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-cloud-service-providers-forum-f34/

IMPORTANT NOTE:

The product team have built in an important warning that VCSP customers will see if their Service Provider endpoints are not version 9.5. It will show the warning below that the Cloud Connect platform version is not up to date and that performing the update will backup and replication jobs will stop working. Again, this is why it’s critical that all VCSPs upgrade ASAP.

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