Is Veeam doing anything in KVM space?

[Gostev]

We are looking to move to KVM over the next 2 years. Would like to keep VEEAM if possible.

2018 time frame is much more of a possibility if KVM continues its current trend. It is the short-term where adding KVM support makes no business sense for us based on its absolute market share in the companies who would actually be willing to pay for a backup solution.

[jmmarton]

There's also the upcoming Agents for Windows & Linux which can be used in the interim to backup VMs in KVM and other open source hypervisors.

Joe

[SteelContainer]

Hi All,

Just wondering if there are any plans to support systems such as AIX or adding any new hypervisor support - KVM, xenserver?

Thanks,
Cullan

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Cullan, there are no plans to support these systems in the short term future.

[Ejdesgaard]

Any news?

Have you recently done any customer surveys to keep track of your customer-base's interest in alternative hypervisors?

[infused]

I'd say KVM would still be niche. Nutanix is very expensive compared to san/host/vmware or hyperv comobo.

Hyperv + storage spaces direct are going to give Nutanix a run for their money over the next few years.

[veremin]

Any news?

Nothing has changed for this matter since October 28. Thanks.

[JaySt]

It is the short-term where adding KVM support makes no business sense for us based on its absolute market share in the companies who would actually be willing to pay for a backup solution.

I can agree on the first part (for now, but things are moving fast), but not (fully) on the second part. Please be carefull when you link KVM usage to willingness to invest in backup solutions. I'm not seeing that link as a storage/server/virt./Veeam reseller & integrator.
I think, based on customer feedback, VMware is on the wrong path regarding license costs. Talk to the "old" vSphere Enterprise edition customers for example...

[Dima P.]

Guys,

If you have Windows or Linux VMs running on a KVM hypervisor you can always use Veeam Agent for Linux and Veeam Endpoint Backup to cover these workloads. Since agents work on a guest level, such scenario is supported

[Ejdesgaard]

2018 time frame is much more of a possibility if KVM continues its current trend. It is the short-term where adding KVM support makes no business sense for us based on its absolute market share in the companies who would actually be willing to pay for a backup solution.

I have to disagree on your last point.
Most if not all of our small customers are running a kvm based hypervisor solution(single host) and _all_ of them are paying for offsite backup today and in all cases it's an inferior product, compared to B&R+cloud connect.

I am confident that if B&R supported KVM / libvirt hosts, then most of those customers would move to a cloud connect based solution.

The only argument against using something like Proxmox, compared to similarly costing version of hyper-v, for a small customer needing a single host, running <10 VM's, is the lack of Veeam B&R support and the pro's for Proxmox in such a case outruns the cons by an order of magnitude.

[J1mbo]

Maybe Veeam could add a nice GUI for KVM as well with functionality comparable to the old vSphere client.

[toffitomek]

I think Nutanix has now some Backup CBT API available:
https://www.nutanix.com/2016/09/21/comp ... -software/

and from here:
http://myvirtualcloud.net/nutanix-5-0-f ... ing-part-2

Acropolis Change Block Tracking (CBT) for Backup Vendors
With AOS 5.0 backup vendors can take full advantage of Nutanix based CBT (hypervisor agnostic) to take both incremental and differential backups of disks and VMs more efficiently. If your cluster only running VMware vSphere you already have CBT via the hypervisor; however with Nutanix CBT similar capabilities are available to the base platform enabling multi-hypervisor CBT support. Administrator will now be able use the same backup tools and methods across all supported hypervisors.
Nutanix CBT utilizes the new REST 3.0 API that can be used to query for the changed meta-data regions given any two snapshots of a virtual disk or virtual machine. The approach is valuable for taking incremental and differential backups; and even useful while taking full backups because the API identifies regions that are spare (zeroed), therefore saving on read operations.
Nutanix will soon announce backup partners integrating natively with the platform.

[romanp]

How does Veeam Endpoint assist in this scenario? And will endpoint support backup and replication?

[Vitaliy S.]

You can use backup agent (VAW/VEB) to protect VMs running on the KVM, like any other agent-based solution. Replication is not coming in VAW 2.0.

[fdizone]

Currently migrating from VMWare to Scale Computing. Would love for Veeam to consider KVM. As of now I have to switch backup software vendors and lose the ability to do host-level VM backups.

[Gostev]

If you're not doing host level backup anyway, you can as well use Veeam agents - and stay with us

[adapterer]

Slight digression but I'm genuinely interested to know the answer as maybe it informs current trends, why would someone choose KVM over Hyper-V free? (Apart from the old " I *personally* like Windows/*nix better")

[Gostev]

Well, KVM got really hot due to all the OpenStack madness in the past years, but now that it's largely over as people woke up to reality re: OpenStack, the biggest reason to use KVM is gone indeed. I still think it has the future, but only in proprietary architectures like Nutanix AHV.

[dellock6]

I (and many providers I talk to) honestly disagree with this, but I have a feeling it will become a long discussion that is not suitable to be done in public. It's not just free vs free, you also have to consider all the linux ecosystem and skills of It admins that can be leveraged with kvm, and this is a plus for many.

[Gostev]

Luca, I think we actually agree with each other, because I do consider each purpose-build service provider cloud a "proprietary architecture" too. Because it really is a different LEGO house from one to another.

Just as you noted, KVM requires certain special skills from IT admins. Nutanix is reasonably successful with AHV because they abstract you from these complexities, providing a solution "for everyone" without requiring the existing linux ecosystem and skills in-house. And service providers simply have those skills in-house already anyway - so KVM allows them to even better leverage their existing expertise to save even more money. And considering their business is about saving pennies (and fractions of pennies), no doubt they are excited to get to use something else that is "free".

[jlvandewalle]

HI,

We are currently investigating the possibility to build a container park using RedHat OpenShift.
This infrastructure is build using VM running on different different type of hypervisors.

In order to keep it consistent from top to bottom the platform owner wants to use RedHat Virtualisation (RHEV) infrastructure for his container platform.

Is it possible that Veeam B&R will once support such RedHat Virtualization hypervisor?
If yes, in what timeframe?

In the meanwhile what could you advise as "temporary" solution? (Veeam agent for Linux running on hypervisor/VM?, ...)

Regards,

Jean-Louis

[nielsengelen]

Currently there are no plans for this within Veeam Backup & Replication however you can use the Veeam Agent for Linux within the VM's as you already suggested.

[frmounce]

I really am hoping that Veeam does move into KVM space per say. There is a newer company called MidFin that uses KVM as there hyper-visor. Please look further into working with this technology.

[A1ex]

Hi All.

KVM support still actual due to it's usage at big virtual private cloud providers (at least in Russia). Veeam Agent is good alternative for backup, but it is not convenient for restore in virtual environment. With VBR we have possibility to restore VM with several mouse clicks from different host, but with Veeam Agent it is not possible to do in such fast manner. Does Veeam Software plan to implement fast restore to virtual environment backups from Veeam Agent? Looks like it should be not so difficult to implement, because virtual hardware is known (unlike baremetal - a lot of chipsets, HDD and network controllers etc.) and it could be easy to inject drivers and run backuped server from VBR repository. Please, give us a hope!

[Gostev]

We support fast restore to virtual environment backups from Veeam Agent for Hyper-V today, and planning to add the same capability for vSphere. However, KVM support is not currently planned. Thanks!

[A1ex]

Gostev thanks for answer. It will be great when backups from Agent will support fast restore to vShphere. Could it be realized by the end of 2018?

[Gostev]

Unfortunately, no - your time frame means this feature would have to be a part of Update 4 release vehicle, which it is not.

[grouponeconsulting]

Veeam needs to take a close look at OnAPP - onapp.com which in their upcoming 6.0 LTS OnApp is exposing APIs for 3rd Partner backup vendors to integrate much like a Nutanix. We're using KVM VM's with OnApp (they also support Xen) and since its more of a proprietary solution like Nutanix this would be a good fit. OnApp customers make up 30% of the Cloud systems on the planet and lthe backup solutions available for KVM/XEN are crappola!

[Martini]

We are really waiting for KVM support, we use KVM with a custom OpenStack implementation. There are no good backup methods directly from hypervisor.
Now that there is Nutanix support, knowing there OS is based on KVM it couldn't be to hard to implement this. All OpenStack / KVM users are stuck with agent based backup which is not great for big hosting environments.
Are there any known plans to implement this in VBR?

[Gostev]

Currently, there are no plans - particularly because the following is an incorrect statement "knowing there OS is based on KVM it couldn't be to hard to implement this".

There are a couple of key differences there:
- Nutanix provides changed block tracking API that KVM lacks natively (and CBT is an absolutely essential functionality for an image-level backup)
- Nutanix AHV is the single, predictable configuration vs. a big zoo which is the OpenStack world (every deployment is different, so it would be a nightmare for Veeam to support)