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.