Veeam Backup & Replication v12.3: Key Features & Enhancements

This week, Veeam made Generally Available Veeam Backup & Replication v12.3 (Build 12.3.0.310), our third Veeam Data Platform release of the year building on the solid foundations of v12, v12.1, and most recently, only three months ago, v12.2. This release probably shouldn’t be treated as a minor release, and represents a strong statement across a couple of fronts… those being a continued commitment to increasing the cyber resiliency of the platform as well as re-affirming support for our Veeam Cloud and Service Providers which specific enhancements around DRaaS. We have also kept the Enterprise feature set push going with the addition of support for the protections of EntraID as well as looking to squeeze even more performance out of our software driven, hardware agnostic platform.

Veeam Backup & Replication v12.3: Delivering Unmatched Data Resilience, Enhanced Cybersecurity, and Seamless Protection for Workloads Across On-Premises, Cloud, and Hybrid Environments. This release empowers businesses to confidently safeguard their data, meet evolving compliance demands, and achieve operational continuity with advanced features and scalability.

Major Features and Enhancements

The v12.3 release introduces new features and enhancements beyond what you would expect from a point release, with the most impactful being the following:

The integration of Veeam Data Cloud Vault introduces a fully integrated, first-party cloud object storage solution that simplifies procurement and provisioning. Designed for maximum reliability, it delivers up to 12 nines of durability, making it a secure, scalable, and cost-effective choice for backup storage in any environment. We have also added in 11:11 as an Object Storage target directly from the menu.

Cyber Resiliency Enhancements in v12.3 take security to the next level. With Indicators of Compromise (IoC) Detection, organizations can proactively identify hacker toolkits and potential threats, significantly reducing response times and ensuring backups remain uncompromised. Meanwhile, the new Veeam Threat Hunter leverages YARA rules and machine learning to deliver real-time detection of zero-day malware and polymorphic ransomware, providing businesses with advanced protection against the most sophisticated cyberattacks.

Expanding support for New Workloads, Veeam now includes backup capabilities for Microsoft Entra ID, simplifying compliance and recovery through change detection, object-level recovery, and role-based access.. a clear Enterprise level feature. For Nutanix environments, Enhanced AHV Protection brings application-aware processing and inline malware detection, offering enterprise-grade consistency and security. Additionally, v12.3 ensures protection for the latest platforms, with support for Microsoft Windows Server 2025, Windows 11 24H2, and macOS 15 (Sequoia), extending Veeam’s capabilities across both enterprise and end-user environments.

Scalability and Performance Enhancements in this release are equally impressive. The new engine offers 5x the scalability for Instant Recovery, enabling the rapid restoration of up to 200 VMs simultaneously which is a critical advancement for large scale enterprises and service providers alike. Recovery performance has also been optimized for Linux file-level recovery and database workloads like PostgreSQL and Oracle RMAN, now up to 5x faster. Additionally, Automatic Bucket Provisioning streamlines S3-compatible object storage deployment, improving scalability for on-premises environments.

For Veeam Cloud & Service Providers, v12.3 delivers targeted features to improve flexibility and customer autonomy. Self-service disaster recovery capabilities for VMware Cloud Director empower tenants to manage their own disaster recovery and replication jobs, reducing the administrative burden. Non disruptive CDP replica testing ensures recoverability can be verified without impacting replication workflows, while malware detection for Cloud Connect tenant backups provides advanced scanning to secure tenant data. Lastly, direct public cloud restores simplify migrations and disaster recovery, allowing tenant backups to be restored directly to AWS EC2 or Azure IaaS with ease.

Key Highlights

I want to highlight two key points that stand out for me, as part of this release… one that reinforces our commitment to our long standing partners, and the other showing the industry that, while we are not a security company, we take security very seriously.

For Veeam Cloud & Service Providers:

Veeam Backup & Replication v12.3 delivers a host of updates designed to empower service providers with more flexibility, automation, and control. With the introduction of self-service disaster recovery capabilities in VMware Cloud Director, tenants can now independently manage their replication jobs and disaster recovery plans, reducing administrative overhead for providers while enhancing customer satisfaction. The ability to perform non disruptive recoverability testing for Continuous Data Protection (CDP) replicas ensures that service providers can validate disaster readiness without impacting production environments. Additionally, new malware detection capabilities for Cloud Connect tenant backups proactively safeguard against ransomware threats, while the option to restore tenant backups directly to AWS EC2 or Azure IaaS simplifies cloud migrations and disaster recovery scenarios.

These features underline Veeam’s commitment to equipping VCSPs with the tools they need to offer reliable, secure, and innovative data protection services.

Cyber Resiliency and Security Advancements:

Veeam v12.3 raises the bar for cyber resiliency with advanced features that keep businesses protected against today’s most sophisticated threats. Indicators of Compromise (IoC) detection provides early identification of malicious activity by detecting hacker toolkits and utilities often used for data exfiltration or lateral movement. Coupled with Veeam Threat Hunter, which leverages YARA rules and machine learning, businesses can proactively detect advanced malware, zero-day threats, and polymorphic ransomware, ensuring their backups remain uncompromised. These features not only reduce the mean time to detect (MTTD) threats but also bolster organizational confidence in recovery readiness. With cyberattacks becoming increasingly prevalent and costly, Veeam’s focus on integrated threat detection and secure backup validation positions organizations to recover swiftly and securely, minimizing business impact and ensuring operational continuity.

Other Highlights

Veeam Backup & Replication v12.3 introduces features and enhancements designed to improve performance, scalability, and security for modern enterprises. Below are some additional highlights worth noting:

MongoDB Enhancements: Support for MongoDB 8 with advanced recovery capabilities using Veeam Explorer for granular data restoration, improving data protection for NoSQL environments.
NetApp SnapDiff Integration: Faster incremental backups for NAS workloads by leveraging the SnapDiff API, reducing resource consumption and improving efficiency.
Extended CDP Retention: Support for short-term retention up to 7 days, covering extended holiday periods while maintaining near-zero RPO.
Tape Backup Improvements: Enhanced NAS backup-to-tape performance, granular retry options for failed tasks, and improved handling of edge cases for greater reliability.
Automatic Bucket Provisioning: Simplifies S3 compatible object storage deployments by dynamically creating new buckets for improved scalability and reduced metadata bottlenecks.
Oracle RMAN Enhancements: Full support for Oracle 23ai with advanced restore options for corrupted block recovery and enhanced authentication for better security.
ISO-Based Patching: Introduces cumulative ISO patches, streamlining the update process and reducing downtime during maintenance windows.
Guest File System Indexing for Nutanix AHV: Enables accelerated self-service file-level recovery through Veeam Enterprise Manager, improving operational efficiency.
Cross-platform VM Restores support for restore your physical, virtual and cloud machines from any image-level Veeam backup directly to RHV or OLVM hypervisors.
API and Automation: New REST API endpoints for license management, data integration, and advanced reporting, allowing seamless integration with existing IT workflows.

These additional features reinforce Veeam’s commitment to delivering enterprise grade data protection solutions, enabling organizations to confidently protect and recover their data in diverse and complex environments. For a detailed overview, be sure to explore the complete What’s New document.

A Closing Note… more to come!

This is just what’s in Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3! I haven’t touched on what is new in Veeam ONE as well, which more than ever becomes a critical one/two punch or simply put… they are better together. Specifically, I will point out the addition of Veeam Intelligence into Veeam ONE which allows for natural language interactions with the platform to get fast, efficient results based on prompts within the Veeam ONE Web Client… I’ll be touching on that and more in a follow-up post.

In addition to this, it’s a great testement to our Veeam R&D Team to have released three pretty major updates for the data platform since the start of the year, this is not something that should be underestimated! We now power forward to what’s next! And What’s Next is shaping up to be truly special!

For a full list, check out the release notes below and download Veeam Backup & Replication v12.3 today.