Late last week, Veeam made available to our VCSP partners the RTM of Veeam Backup & Replication 10 (Build 10.0.0.4442). This is a much awaited version of Backup & Replication and before it goes GA, we give our providers a windows to deploy the new version as v10 is what we term a breaking update. This means that if a Cloud Connect tenant upgrades from any previous 9.5 version before VCSPs 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.

Backward Compatibility and Veeam Platform Support:

Veeam Backup & Replication releases from 9.5 GA (build 9.5.0.711) can write backups via Cloud Connect to a cloud repository on v10. For Cloud Connect Replication, pre vCloud Director Hardware Plan based replicas can go to a cloud host on v10. To take advantage of the vCloud Director based replication, tenants need to be on at least 9.5 Update 4. To take advantage of the new features listed below, all tenants are required to be on v10.

As I detailed last week, there is an update that need to be applied to Veeam Availability Console v3 to make it compatible with v10 and there is also a new build of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v4 (4.0.0.2516) that is bundled with the v10 RTM download that needs to be applied to ensure compatibility with that. In addition to that and Backup & Replication v10, the RTM location also contains the new versions of Veeam ONE v10 (10.0.0.750) and the new versions of Agent for Windows (4.0.0.177) and Linux (4.0.0.1947).

VCSP Features and Enhancements:

v10 is huge release release and contains a number of enhancements and known issue fixes with a lot of those enhancements aimed at improving the scalability of the Backup & Replication platform that VCSPs can take advantage of.  There will be a live streamed event on the 18th of Feburary that will coincide with GA. You can register for that event here.

  • Enhanced Cloud Tier with COPY Mode, Immutability and Object Storage Mount! Building on from the Update 4 Release of Cloud Tier, we have introduced three new key features for Cloud Tier which all VCSPs can take advantage of to enhance existing offerings.
  • Enhanced Instant VM Recovery – Significant work has gone into enhancing this cornerstone Veeam feature. There is more power and performance in v10 along with the ability to perform Instant VM Recoveries from any platform to vSphere.
  • Linux Proxies – Significant for VCSPs as a way to immediately reduce licensing overheads and streamline proxy deployment.
  • New NAS Backup– While not VCSP specific, the new NAS backup should give VCSPs ideas around new service offerings for the backup of file shares for tenants and managed service customers.

One important note is around the recently introduced Universal licensing model that all VCSPs should be aware of. There is guidance in the VCSP Release Notes that was sent to all VCSPs as part of an email blast today. In a nutshell, a new license will be required, but we have done some work to streamline that process, so again, please read the documentation.

There has also been a lot of work to improve and enhance scalability in the Backup & Replication Cloud Connect functionality to accomodate the increasing usage of Veeam Agent for Windows and Linux of which there are new versions (4.0.0.x) released at the same time of v10 RTM/GA. As a reminder, for Veeam Availability Console v3, v10 will be taken advantage of fully in the upcoming major release a little later after the v10 GA which is slated for the 18th of Feburary.

v10 Preview Posts:

Conclusion:

Once again, v10 for Veeam Backup & Replication is an huge milestone for Veeam and our VCSPs will be able to leverage a lot of the new features and enhancements to further enhance their own offerings based on Veeam Technologies. 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 installations.

For more info in the RTM, head to the VCSP Forum post here.