Veeam has been releasing new features for Backup & Replication v9.0 for a while now, but the recent announcement around the Scale-out Backup Repository is probably the most significant so far…especially for those running large backup repositories such as Service Providers who operate a Cloud Connect offering. Manageability of large repositories has been an ongoing challenge for Veeam administrators and many know about the pain associated with having to juggle storage to accomodate increasing backup file sizes and what’s involved in having to migrate jobs to larger repositories.
In a sentence, a scale-out repository will group multiple “simple” repositories into a single entity which will then be used as a target for any backup copy and backup job operation.
As Luca describes in his Veeam Blog Post, Veeam administrators don’t have to think too hard about how this dramatically simplifies the configuration and management of backup jobs and removes the pain of repository sprawl and optimizes storage by letting the new repository algorithms work out the best place to place a backup job based on the global Scale-Out repository namespace.
With this new capability, Service Providers will be able to:
- Dramatically simplify backup storage and backup job management through a single, software-defined backup repository encompassing multiple heterogeneous storage devices
- Reduce storage hardware spending by allowing existing backup storage investments to be fully leveraged, eliminating the problem of underutilized backup storage devices
- Improve backup performance, allowing for lower RPOs and reduced risk of data loss in daily operations
Beyond the official release info…thinking about how this helps Cloud Service Providers offering Cloud Connect and Replication, the fact you can target all jobs to that single Global repository means that as storage becomes an issue all that’s required is to add a new target and let Veeam B&R do it’s job to place any new backup jobs. Perfect for those who had previously struggled with how to build into their offering a way to automatically load balance jobs based on target repository sizes.
As mentioned…a brilliant new feature of v9 and can’t wait for it to be available for Cloud Connect and Cloud Connect Replication in future v9 Updates!
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