The data center continues to evolve, and data protection has to keep pace. Organizations want to intelligently leverage cloud resources to augment their on-premises data protection capabilities, and they need to respond to increased scrutiny of protected copies from regulations like GDPR and threats like malware. Most data protection vendors are doing very little to help an organization meet these demands so that IT’s data protection strategy can keep up with the ever modernizing data center.
Intelligent Use of the Cloud
Most organizations do not want to go “all-in” with the cloud, so hybrid cloud strategies rule the day, and most organizations continue to have valuable on-premises assets. Those organizations do, however, want to leverage cloud resources where possible, especially concerning data protection. Most recoveries are not disasters, so keeping an on-premises copy of data makes more sense than having all of the organization’s data in the cloud. Most recoveries though are from the most recent backup. The time has come for multi-tier backup storage. Backup software that enables organizations to boot from the backup device means the organization may want to invest in higher performing backup storage. The problem is, for high-performance backup storage to be practical, backup applications need to automatically tier old backup data to a lower cost secondary storage device, either an on-premises object store or an S3 compatible cloud, which is a capability that most data protection applications do not have.
A hybrid model means using the cloud to augment an organization’s on-premises production resources as well. The problem is how to move workloads to the cloud when on-premises resources are tapped out. A modern data protection solution should help with migration and deliver portability between on-premises and the cloud as well as portability between clouds. IT can use the capability to use the cloud for test/dev, disaster recovery and bursting workloads to the cloud.
Backup Data Verification
Verifying the quality of a backup has always been a top priority, but in the modern data center, the importance of verification is intensifying thanks to new regulations like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as well as the ongoing threat of malware. Organizations need to verify their backups to make sure that malware files and that “right to be forgotten” data are not part of the restore process.
Introducing Veeam 9.5 Update 4
In its latest release, Veeam 9.5 Update 4, Veeam is proving it can keep pace with the modern data center. The release adds support for two critical cloud capabilities, Veeam Cloud Tier and Veeam Cloud Mobility. Veeam Cloud Tier enables Veeam customers to realize a 10X reduction in secondary storage costs by providing integrated object storage support.
The Cloud Tier capability also pays dividends for Veeam’s Instant Recovery Feature. Customers can now afford to create a performance backup tier that holds the most recent backups and is suitable for delivering the performance Instant Recovery requires. Cloud Tier moves old backup data to either on-premises object storage or cloud storage thus minimizing the investment in the performance tier.
The Veeam Cloud Mobility feature provides easy portability and recovery to AWS, Azure and Azure Stack. The feature enables the organization to maintain business continuity and availability across hybrid cloud environments with just two steps.
The Veeam DataLabs feature enables organizations to meet the challenges presented by new regulations and cyber-attack. DataLabs enables organizations to create an on-demand sandbox to validate backups and replicas. New with Update 4 is a DataLabs Staged Restore capability that reduces the time to review sensitive data and remove personal data to meet regulations like GDPR and CCPA as well as other future regulations. Administrators can creat PowerShell scripts to further automate the process and complete the process within minutes.
Also new with Update 4 is Data Labs Secure Restore which scans backups with a patent-pending anti-virus software interface to prevent introducing viruses and malware into the production environment.
Update 4 also adds Intelligent Diagnostics that enables organizations to move beyond simple availability with built-in automation. The feature can minimize downtime by self-identifying infrastructure issues which leads to reduced recovery times and time spent on support calls. Intelligent Diagnostics is operated from inside Veeam ONE (Instead of Veeam Backup and Replication) to ensure 24/7 monitoring and timely alerts.
The update includes more than 21 other updates to the product and three improved capabilities for Veeam Service Providers.
StorageSwiss Take
Today most data protection companies are either born in the data center or born in the cloud. Decidedly few protection vendors have successfully transitioned to support both environments. Enterprise customers want intelligent support of cloud capabilities like leveraging cloud storage for long term data retention, using the data protection for cloud portability and leveraging the cloud for recovery. At the same time, the organization needs to continue to have robust on-premises support.
Veeam, with its fourth update to its 9.5 release is demonstrating it can break the trend by continuing to improve and broaden its on-premises support while guiding its customers to the cloud. Update 4 brings cloud tiering and cloud mobility. The release also tackles other data center challenges like compliance and ensuring malware-free restores. Veeam Availability Suite Update 4 sets a high bar in both on-premises and cloud data protection.
George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
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