Veeam to introduce verification for virtual machine backups

Veeam aims to ease the verification of virtual machine backups

Virtualisation specialist Veeam has unveiled technology that can test virtual machine backups to ensure that systems can be successfully recovered.

The software can also automate the process, enabling administrators to be sure they are protected in the event of something going wrong.

The technology is an enhanced version of SureBackup that will feature in the next release of Veeam's Backup & Replication suite for VMware environments, due for release early in the second half of 2010.

The problem with virtual machine backups, according to Veeam, is that companies cannot be sure whether they have a valid backup unless it is extracted and run to ensure that the application is functioning properly.

"Your backup is essentially a snapshot of a live running system, but when you recover it, it's turned off so you need to boot it up," said Doug Hazelman, director of Veaam's Global Systems Engineering group.

This is such a time-consuming process that it is impractical to verify backups for large numbers of virtual machines, he said.

However, with the enhanced SureBackup, Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 will be able to run a virtual machine directly from a compressed backup file, and do so in an isolated test environment with parameters defined by the IT department.

"You can choose where to create your isolated environment, specify CPU and memory resources plus application dependencies, then schedule when you want the verification to run, which will be outside the backup window," explained Hazelman.

Testers can define whether to do a system heartbeat test, ping the target system, or run test scripts, he added.

The advantage of this backup method is that it is platform agnostic, according to Veeam, and allows customers to backup any application running on any operating system supported by VMware's ESX 3.0 and above, without the need for backup agents on the target systems.

The verification process can use existing production or lab resources, as it requires minimal disk space and should not place too much extra strain on resources, said Hazelman.

Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 is likely to be split into two editions when it ships. A Standard edition will be available as an upgrade for existing customers, while the enhanced SureBackup will be part of a new Enterprise edition carrying a higher price tag.

Hazelman said that the Enterprise edition will have further enterprise-grade features, but that the company is not yet ready to disclose the full feature set.