Veeam Backup & Replication v12.1 – Top New Features

This week, Veeam made Generally Available Veeam Backup & Replication v12.1 (Build 12.1.0.2131) and it comes less than 10 months after the flagship release of v12. However, don’t be fooled by the .1 release number, this is a significant release in Veeam’s history as we move towards encompassing a focus on cyber security starting and ending with backup. What that means is that with a solid and trustworthy backup, recovery and validation engine at our core, we can build with our eco-system partners to help deliver resiliency for our customers and partners. This year has been about education… education around the threat of cyber attacks and making organizations aware that they need a solid, reliable data protection solution that works as part of an overall strategy to ensure full recoverability when the inevitable happens.

Veeam Backup & Replication v12.1 represents a leap forward in data protection, addressing key areas such as cyberthreats, recovery efficiency, compliance, cloud integration, and continuous data protection. This release cements Veeam’s position as a leader in the data protection space, offering robust, flexible, and secure solutions for modern IT environments.

Major Features and Enhancements

The v12.1 release brings with it a 24 What’s New pages new features and enhancements with the top new features in my eyes being:

Cyberthreat Detection: Detect threats and anomalies inline during backup or in real-time, integrating with EDR tools and submitting to SIEM systems for proactive threat hunting.
Inline Malware Detection: Performs low-impact entropy analysis to detect ransomware encryption and other malware signs directly in the backup stream.
Suspicious File System Activity Detection: Searches for known malware file extensions, ransom notes, and detects suspicious changes in file system activity.
Early Threat Detection: Uses Veeam Incident API for external EDR tools to notify backup servers of infections.
Malware Recovery: Includes scanning backups with YARA to find clean restore points and avoid reinfections, along with robust threat tracking and event forwarding to SIEM systems.
Four-Eyes Authorization: Requires approval from a second administrator for sensitive backup server changes.
Key Management Server Integration: Utilizes asymmetric encryption keys for enhanced security and backup encryption key lifecycle management.
Veeam App for ServiceNow: Provides backup visibility, automatic incident creation, and backup dashboard in ServiceNow.
Backup of Object Storage: Offers a scalable, storage-agnostic architecture with extensive data source support and flexible protection scoping.
Veeam Continuous Data Protection Enhancements: Improved performance and reliability with features like file-level recovery, application item-level recovery, automated recoverability testing, and I/O Anomaly Visualizer.
Veeam AI Assistant: A GPT assistant built into the backup console for product usage advice and help.

I did want to quickly highlight two new enhancements that I think are significant.

Veeam Backup & Replication v12.1 introduces an our first major implementation to cyberthreat detection, focusing on minimizing data loss from cyberattacks by ensuring a clean backup stream from which to recover from. We are detecting threats inline during backups or in real-time by integrating with EDR tools and SIEM systems. Key features include inline malware detection that performs entropy analysis to identify ransomware encryption, and suspicious file system activity detection that searches for known malware signs. Additionally, early threat detection via the Veeam Incident API marks restore points created after detected infections. The update also enhances malware recovery capabilities, with tools like YARA scans to identify clean restore points and robust event-based threat tracking. This suite of security enhancements in v12.1 ensures more efficient threat detection, faster response times, and reinforced protection against malware reintroductions, all while providing seamless event forwarding to SIEM systems for comprehensive security management.

The 12.1 release marks a significant advancement in Continuous Data Protection (CDP) with substantial improvements in performance and reliability. The update boasts a 4x increase in VMs and virtual disks support and a 2x decrease in compute requirements, enhancing protection for T1 workloads in large-scale environments. Notable features include the ability to perform item-level recovery and test failover on CDP replicas without halting replication. New functionalities such as file-level recovery from any point in time, application item-level recovery, automated recoverability testing, and the I/O Anomaly Visualizer for precise recovery timing, collectively elevate the CDP feature, assuring minimal data loss and more reliable disaster recovery solutions.

Other Highlights…

This below covers the other new features and enhancements in v12.1, highlighting my big notables as working through the What’s New.

Backup Engine Enhancements: Includes TLS 1.3 readiness, stronger backup encryption, and enhanced sensitive data protection.
Backup Data Management: Customizable retention options, ability to disable background retention processing, and improved backup movement.
Backup Infrastructure: PostgreSQL database scalability, database load reduction, and improved multipath support for Linux-based VMware backup proxies.
Object Storage Repositories: Enhanced performance, governance immutability mode, and scalable, storage-agnostic architecture.
Scale-out Backup Repositories: Enhanced export backups and backup consistency checks.
Recovery from Image-level Backups: Instant disk publish for file-level recovery and improved restore performance.
Agent Management: Centralized management for AIX & Solaris, and deployer service for Linux.
Backup Appliances and Platform Support: Includes updates for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and VMware.
Cloud Connect Enhancements: PostgreSQL database support for Veeam Cloud Connect and maintenance mode enhancements.
Backup Console Improvements: Dynamic data refresh rate, backup properties improvements, and encryption password checks.
Enterprise Manager Updates: Support for managed by agent policies and improved Microsoft Exchange restore capabilities.
REST API Expansion: Includes new capabilities for file-level recovery, VMware Cloud Director backups, and replication jobs management.

I would encourage anyone using Veeam to study the What’s New document and there is seriously a lot more detail around the ones I’ve mentioned above, and the rest of the new features and enhancements. We have also done a lot of under the hood enhancements to streamline and make more efficient backup operations, reduce load on the server and increase the performance of the Backup & Replication Console.