Veeam and EMC VNX / VNXe – Better together in v9
The release of Veeam Availability Suite v9 was made on 12th January 2016 with some features that took this product to a new height. In particular the feature I wanted to highlight in this article is the integration with EMC VNX and VNXe platforms.
Veeam has partnered with other vendors in the past to bring tight storage snapshot integration with its world class backup product but the introduction of partnering with EMC in particular its VNX platform results in a world class competitive solution for availability and the always on datacenter.
This diagram, courtesy of Veeam, captures the key capabilities.
The storage snapshots that are taken on the array become Veeam’s prize possession in the world of backups and restores. By leveraging the array capabilities, your VMs no longer have the overhead processing associated with the traditional backup and the Veeam proxy is now reading data from the snapshot on the array and not the host snapshot at the hypervisor level. Having the capability to take a backup at any point in the day with no impact to a VM should make your eyes light up as backup windows are always a challenge in any Midsize to Enterprise sized company.
One of the features that makes this easy for any backup or storage admin is that the snapshot schedule can be controlled on the array or from the Veeam Console so now there is true flexibility to allow any team to take responsibility for where the schedule is configured.
When it comes to restores, you can see above that you get all the features that Veeam brings with guest file restores and tight plugin integration with AD, Sharepoint etc. and the timesaver here is that Veeam can read directly from the array based snapshot and ideally from a backup of this snapshot.
In summary, if you’ve made an investment in either or both of these products you may want to review your backup processes and your backup windows as bringing these I.T powerhouses together can simplify your datacenter availability concerns.
If you’d like to attend a webinar to learn more then my good friend Rick Vanover will be talking through these integration areas in fine detail.
Go register below for an in depth look at how you could make yourself a backup ninja at your company –
Configuring EMC VNX / VNXe with Veeam