Veeam adds ESXi support to virtual backup tool

Veeam extends datacentre backup coverage

Virtualisation management firm Veeam Software has released version 3.0 of its Veeam Backup for VMware-based infrastructure, adding a number of features including full support for VMware's ESXi bare-metal hypervisor and file-level recovery for Linux virtual machines.

Available immediately, Veeam Backup 3.0 supports servers running the bare-metal ESXi hypervisor as well as VMware's traditional infrastructure products. This is a key enhancement, according to Veeam, as many enterprises have adopted ESXi following VMware's decision to make it a free download.

"Many customers are now using ESXi even for mission-critical tasks because it is a free download, but we are the first backup vendor to fully support it," said Veeam chief executive Ratmir Timashev.

The company claimed that Veeam Backup is therefore the only tool able to fully back up and recover virtual machines across such mixed environments, all from a single console.

Also new is support for file-level restores from image-based backups of Linux virtual machines. While this is already possible with Windows servers, Veeam said it has added it for Linux in response to customer demand.

"In 90 per cent of cases, customers just want file-level recovery. Some of our rivals can do this, but only if they restore the whole virtual machine first. We can do it on the fly," said Timashev.

Veeam Backup 3.0 also has full support for Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) in Windows Server 2008 guests, which Timashev claimed as another first.

But while VSS enables a backup to be safely made of a virtual machine and the application inside it, the application must be directed during a recovery to restore from the shadow copy instead of performing a regular startup, according to Veeam.

"We believe most applications backed up using rival tools would not restore in the event of a crash, because they don't follow the guidelines Microsoft requires for a restart," Timashev said.

Other enhancements include an overall improvement in performance, and the ability to back up virtual machine templates.

Veeam Backup 3.0 is licensed at £389 per processor socket, for chips with up to six cores.