Physical Server Backup

[shortb]

I know this is and old post, but I just recently ran across it and got a little upset with the lack of respect from the mods/staff at Veeam. stating:

"We have no plans for physical server backup at this time, because we don't believe physical servers have a future. We thought so in 2007, and of course we will not change our mind in 2014, when majority of servers in the world are virtual. We are also the fastest growing backup company ever, and it would definitely be a big mistake for us to screw the momentum by distracting ourselves from our "virtual-only" strategy." - Gostev

For those of you who had the question in this post they did decide to backup physical devices, it appears that this would do the trick but is aimed towards desktops/laptops:

http://www.veeam.com/news/veeam-announc ... ptops.html

with this announcement, who's to say it isn't in Veeam's best interest to support physical servers at some point in time?

Just an FYI to all of you

[foggy]

You may find some argumentation behind this statement in this thread and a couple of other existing threads on these forums discussing Veeam Endpoint Backup itself.

Btw, may I ask you where do you see the lack of respect here from our side? Thanks.

[Gostev]

@foggy for anyone who (mistakenly) treats Veeam Endpoint Backup as a server backup solution, it may appear that I was not honest in the quoted statement. Only those with knowledge of all the technical limitation of VEB as it comes to physical server backup, as well as good understanding of minimum requirements of true server backup solution will not see any issues with my statement

I said what said specifically because I did not want to set false expectations, and have people expect proper physical server backup solution from Veeam in the near future. THIS would certainly be dishonest to our customers and partners on my part.

As for "some point in future" - sure, anything can happen then, just as I've said in my above linked response. Especially if lack of physical server support starts becoming a real issue impacting our business (we're just not seeing this now with our continuous double-digit revenue growth).

[IronLogix]

So what do folks use to backup Azure and AWS virtual machines? With no exposure to the underlying hypervisor, we need to be able to backup data (at this time it isnt realistic to backup the entire vm's). Azure backup recovery is cute, but the lack of centralized management and reporting makes it a poor option.

So we are onboard with backing up vitrual machines, but we would love to see veeam provide an offering in the AWS / Azure VM space too. Take that Gostev

[Gostev]

With the current state of data reduction technologies we have built in the past years at Veeam, it is very realistic to backup the entire VMs - the only thing we're lacking is API to get access to the actual virtual disk data. But, I have been all over some of those vendors to provide an API for VM disk contents access, so stay tuned. You can also help by pushing your favorite public cloud's account team for providing something similar to VMware VDDK (so to speak) to 3rd party vendors.

One thing for sure - last thing you want in this case is agent-based backup. Because in public cloud, you are paying for everything - including CPU and network resources those agents will be consuming (and this will add up really fast with hundreds of VMs under protection).

Plus, image-level backups make things so much easier and faster when it comes to recovery...

[Regnor]

What do you guys do in an environment which is +90% virtualized? Do you implement an additional backup software for the physical servers, perhaps in a virtual machine so that you can backup it via Veeam? Or do you use builtin backup mechanisms like Windows Backup and save the files in your virtual environment?
Of course one should always try to virtualize every server but there will always be an application or hardware which can only run on physical hardware.

[veremin]

Are the left 10 percents represented by servers or more like users' endpoints? In the latter, nothing prevents you from protecting them via Endpoint Free. Thanks.

[Regnor]

Well it's only a theoretical question, but I'm talking about servers and not endpoints.

[Gostev]

@Regnor we recommend that the customer simply keeps their existing physical backup solution in place until they are 100% virtualized. With the non-virtual part of the environment constantly shrinking, the overhead of doing this is absolutely minimal.

[baber]

i am so confused can veeam get backup from physical server or not ?

[veremin]

What do refer to with "physical server" phrase? Are you talking here about users' endpoints or physical machines hosting company production application, like AD, SQL, Exchange, etc.?

Also, when you say "Veeam", what product specifically are you asking about?

Thanks.

[lobo519]

I don't understand why these conversations continue to be a game with Veeam employees...You know the majority of us are looking for a good physical backup software and we want it from Veeam. There are some production loads that just don't make fiscal sense to virtualize because they would be the only VM on the Host. The VMware and Veeam licensing alone make it insanely cost prohibitive.

It seems as though you are pretty close with Veeam Endpoint .... FInish the job Veeam!



I'm not attacking you, your current product is solid and we all hate our physical backup products!

[Gostev]

I actually agree with the clarifying question Vladimir is asking. For example, if the question is "Can Veeam Backup & Replication get backup from physical server or not", then the answer would be NO. For Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE, the answer would be MAYBE (depending on the server configuration).

[lobo519]

I actually agree with the clarifying question Vladimir is asking. For example, if the question is "Can Veeam Backup & Replication get backup from physical server or not", then the answer would be NO. For Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE, the answer would be MAYBE (depending on the server configuration).

Understood - but I stand by my statement regardless.

[baber]

can veeam Endpoint Backup get backup from linux servers ?

[veremin]

Nope, it's support backing up Windows-based computers only. Thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

Here is the list of all supported platforms for all future readers > Veeam Endpoint Release Notes

[raynald.chaffaux]

Hi All,

Just a question about backup physical servers. I understand that "veeam Backup & Replication" doesn't provide a solution to backup physical servers. But Can you explain how to backup Hypervisors system state ? "Veeam B&R" don't give a possibility to backup hypervisors files or system state ?

Thanks to you guys for your answers.

Raynald

[foggy]

Raynald, Veeam B&R does not provide such functionality, you can back up virtual machines only.

[Gostev]

Backup of hypervisors themselves is typically not performed by most users, because they can just be easily redeployed from scratch. In fact, most large environments with significant number of hypervisors use so-called "stateless" hypervisors booting from network, so there is simply nothing for us to backup...

[dipendra]

This is what is mentioned in the documentation about physical servers:

For 1-Click restore of guest OS files and for restore of application items, you should have Server edition of Veeam Agent for Windows 2.0 or Server edition of Veeam Agent for Linux 1.0 Update 1.
If your Veeam Backup & Replication is integrated with Server edition of Veeam Agent, and other prerequisites are met, you can use the backups of the physical application servers (Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange)