Free 10-socket license for Veeam's Management Pack for VMware on SCOM2012
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- Created on Wednesday, 25 April 2012 19:35
Veeam is throwing another cool free give-away on the table for all users of VMware vSphere who wants to get detailed monitoring capability of their virtual infrastructure.
Veeam Management Pack for VMware is a management pack for Microsoft's System Center that is currently being released in a brand new version - 2012.
Veeam offers a 10-socket license for free, even including one year of support.
There is only a single restriction, who to get such a free license:
"To qualify for this offer, you must be new to the Veeam MP and have System Center 2012 or plans to deploy it soon." (taken from the Veeam website).
Don't miss this opportunity and get this free license. You can access the license request webpage here.
Veeam FLR with GPT or dynamic disks
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- Created on Thursday, 19 April 2012 16:07
With Veeam Backup&Replication v6 support for GPT and simple dynamic disks was added. Well, this is not a really new information but I found that many of my customers do not know exactly, what combinations are really supported and how they have to make the FLR (file level restore).
So I decided to write an article about this topic and hope this will clearify some common misunderstandings.
All information below is tested with Veeam B&R version 6 with Patch 1 (at least version 6.0.0.153) but will also valid for higher versions.
How traditional backup software affects VM snapshot grow
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- Created on Tuesday, 27 March 2012 13:01
Using tools like Veeam or vRanger or even VMware's VDR is quite common and I absolutely recommend them. But you probably don't want to use them without a second, traditional backup tool that gives you the ability to write to tape, use online agents for databases etc. etc.. So using a combination of two tools is quite common.
Both tools work on their own techniques for achieving optimal results. Tools for the VI work on snapshot base, traditional tools use agents inside the VM or physical server.
Do they affect each other if you want to use them in combination?
First, why do you ever want to use them both....hm, quite easy to answer, both tools have their strength. For example, you will probably want the DR functionality of VI-tools and the easy of single file restore that come with traditional backup tools.
This can lead to the situation when you make a snapshot backup as well as using the agent inside for file backup at the same time. And you should know what this situation can cause.
Data Protector and virtual environments
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- Created on Friday, 16 March 2012 14:00
HP's Data Protector is a strong and powerful tool to backup physical systems, databases and applications like Exchange or Sharepoint. When it comes to virtual environments, Data Protector wasn't a good choice for a long time. With versions <6.1 backing up virtual machines was either just like physical systems with agents insides the VMs and traffic going over the LAN or using VMware's VCB. Both methods worked but restore was a mess and not easy to handle at all.
With version 6.1 HP introduced VEPA. VEPA stands for Virtual Environment Protection Agent and is a client that supports the vStorage API from VMware to make backup and restore a lot easier than with VCB. VEPA support was enhanced in version 6.2 but still some major problems exist: no support for CBT resulting in huge backup images and differentials or incrementals were only possible with snapshots remaining on the backed up VMs. Restore was still problematic too.
With version 6.21 HP introduced another enhancement for VEPA allowing it to use CBT. Additionally, they developed the Granular Recovery Extension (GRE) that allows users to restore single files from a backup via a self-service-portal within vCenter server or rather vSphere client.
This is a huge enhancement and helps IT departments to move some of the work to the users by still keeping the control over what users do.
So it's worth trying the new VEPA and GRE functionality and see if the marketing slides keep their promise.