Microsoft certification for Veeam B&R 8.x ...

[Didi7]

Unfortunately, I don't have a case ID for this question, so please bear this in mind.

I was unable to find clear facts regarding the certification of B&R with Microsoft Products, specially with B&R under vSphere and VM's with running applications, like MS Exchange, MS SQL, MS Active Directory and the forthcoming support for Oracle databases.

I am constantly confronted with the fact, that Veeam Backup & Replication has no full certification for MS products, whereas Symantec NetBackup has full certification for the upper mentioned products. Is that really true or does Veeam B&R really lack full support or certification for MS products, specially when it comes down to the way, how Veeam B&R makes Backups with VSS or their own proprietary integration and backup techniques for MS FileServers, MS Exchange, MS SQL, MS Active Directory.

Are there any reasons, why big companies might choose competitor products instead of VBR, because of a lack of certification from the MS side?

Who can point me in the right direction?

Best regards,
Didi7


Regards,

[Gostev]

Hi, actually Veeam is certified by Microsoft
http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/ite ... CatID=1282

And regarding VSS intergration specifically, something funny happened a while back. Apparently, our competitors has made so much FUD about Veeam - including through their Microsoft contacts - that believe or not, but about 2 years ago I had Microsoft VSS development team leads themselves reach out to me asking for the detailed walk through of our VSS integration. We had a call, and their conclusion was that our approach is perfectly valid (and very creative, too).

[Gostev]

But, generally I think these certifications are overrated - as they will not help you to restore. I am sure you know how many people on the Internet are unhappy with Symantec specifically due to inability to restore at the time of need. So, their certifications do not guarantee you anything.

On the other hand, Veeam has 157,000+ of happy customers (including 70% of Fortune 500), adding over 10,000 new customers every quarter, and collectively protecting about 20% of all existing virtual machines in the world. And just look at some of the enterprises trusting us with their data. With these facts, how can anyone have any doubt about Veeam's solution?

[Didi7]

Hello Gostev,

you or Veeam do not need to persuade me, as I already sucessfully use Veeam B&R 8.x in one of our VMware Cluster Environment and VBR does its job reliably and pretty fast! I am still excited about VBR and its abilities. The fact is, that Symantec NetBackup has been implemented in a much bigger environment lately here, specially for backup to disk to tape tasks with a very big tape library, consisting of over 200 tape medias and 4 tape drives in the complete enclosure.

Now there is talk about the forthcoming backup product for all our site locations, which still use the traditional Symantec Backup Exec software. Reliable, but outdated and slow, specially since we completely transitioned to virtual machines for the complete site locations since a couple of years, but budget didn't allow new backup products up to now.

There is talk about the way how the central Symantec NetBackup solution can control the backup of each site location with a central console (yes, I read about VBR 9.x upcoming features).

And yes, there was talk about some Symantec NetBackup specialist talking about Veeam B&R not making consistent backups of Windows Servers, specially the ones, that use Exchange, SQL and Active Directory, because of its own VSS Integration and the fact, that VBR is not agentless, because it copies Veeam B&R files (or DLL's) to each virtual machine to make its backup.

I fully understood your last Posts and that even MS did contact you about the way how you backup files with your own VSS Integration.

In the end, I am just looking for some official and Independent clarification or facts about the rumours, that VBR is perfectly making backups of Windows Servers, specially the ones with Exchange, SQL and Active Directory or SharePoint.

I am unsure, whether the mentioning of VBR in Gartner's Magic Quadrant and a plain certification for Windows Server 2012 R2 (with VBR 7.x) is sufficient enough.

Best regards,
Didi7

[marco.horstmann]

Hi Didi,

yes VBR copies a guess interaction process to a VM which will be backuped, but only at runtime of the backup. There is no permanent running service or agent on this server. This files are only our "VSS requestor" to ask Microsoft VSS to do his job.

And Microsoft VSS will talk to the VSS writers like SQL, AD, Exchange and all other VSS aware applications.

Because of requesting a VSS processing, applications will be consistent in the backup image.

Regards
Marco

[Andreas Neufert]

Basically Veeam B&R start an VSS Requestor on the fly. I think there is no certification program from Microsoft for VSS Requestors.

And I was as well not able to find a certification way for Exchange Backup Software.

MS will support their own products, and all other Backup vendors will support their own stuff. ( You can not call MS if you have a problem with a backup solution of another vendor.)

So the question is if you trust the backup vendor or not. I see so many customers struggling with their existing "Enterprise" Backup solutions.
Have a look at our forum, have a look a independent forum platforms and ask existing customers to get a real view. As well you can ask the tech people from our partners.

Certification or not.. in the end you have to restore if something goes wrong. ... your boss will not accept an "but it´s certified" excuse if you can not bring the business critical service back online in the needed time frame.

[Andreas Neufert]

And finally our product isn´t complex. You can easily test our software with a 30 days trial from the website.

Just compare our Exchange Single Mail Restore with other vendors solutions and software prerequirements for granular restore.

[Didi7]

@Andreas Neufert

> Basically Veeam B&R start an VSS Requestor on the fly. I think there is no certification program from Microsoft for VSS Requestors.

Is there no Microsoft certification program for backup software for products like Windows 2012 R2, Exchange, SharePoint or SQL, that certify that MS products are correctly backed up?

> You can not call MS if you have a problem with a backup solution of another vendor

Yes, of course.

> I see so many customers struggling with their existing "Enterprise" Backup solutions.

Really? Could you point me in the right direction? Specially regarding NetBackup?

> And finally our product isn´t complex. You can easily test our software with a 30 days trial from the website. Just compare our Exchange Single Mail Restore with other vendors solutions and software prerequirements for granular restore.

You know, I already use Veeam Backup & Replication Enterprise Edition in one of our VMware cluster environments including Exchange 2010 and the corresponding Veeam Explorer for Exchange for two different domains of two different customers and I am very pleased with the product.

Regards,
Didi7

[foggy]

Is there no Microsoft certification program for backup software for products like Windows 2012 R2, Exchange, SharePoint or SQL, that certify that MS products are correctly backed up?

There's no certification program for backup software. There're general certifications for ability to work on this or that Windows platform and general recommendations for backing up this or that application, like the one below:

Exchange 2013 supports only Exchange-aware, VSS-based backups. Exchange 2013 includes a plug-in for Windows Server Backup that enables you to make and restore VSS-based backups of Exchange data. To back up and restore Exchange 2013, you must use an Exchange-aware application that supports the VSS writer for Exchange 2013, such as Windows Server Backup (with the VSS plug-in), Microsoft System Center 2012 - Data Protection Manager, or a third-party Exchange-aware VSS-based application.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lib ... .150).aspx

So, Veeam B&R is a third-party Exchange-aware application that supports the VSS writer for Exchange 2013.

[Andreas Neufert]

> I see so many customers struggling with their existing "Enterprise" Backup solutions.

Really? Could you point me in the right direction? Specially regarding NetBackup?

I ran into customers that are not able to restore single mails from their enterprise backup product while our Veeam Explorer for Exchange(VEX) helped them to do it from their 3rd party backup (File Restore of DB+Logfile and mounting to VEX).
As you said compared with the other solutions Veeam Backup Process and VEX restore is very easy to do and customer do not struggle there.