XCP-ng support

[ITP-Stan]

I think Veeam should be agnostic and should frankly give customers the independence to pick their platform. Moreover, they should be freed from vendor lock-in by veeam allowing them to restore to any platform they need to. So customers can run whatever combination of hypervisors are required.
Service providers should be able to tell customers, we don't care what hypervisor you are running we can back it up or move it! Xen/XCP should be supported asap!

You can do just that, with Veeam Agents for Windows, Linux and more.
With the agents you make the back-up from within the virtual machine and it's independent from the underlying hypervisor platform.

However, If you want agent-less back-ups it's only logical that Veeam needs to adjust their software to work with the different hypervisors, on how to query API's and how to obtain the data.

In a perfect world, it should actually be the Hypervisor software that should adhere to a new standard and make universal API's so that back-up software can use them.

[AMWindsor]

We use Veeam currently for VMware hypervisor backups but are now looking at Xenserver as an alternative at our Windsor ArcelorMittal operations. Having Veeam backup the Xenserver hypervisor directly is definitely something that we would encourage Veeam to persue.

[tsukraw]

With VeeamOn 2025 currently happening, has anyone who is attending heard anything around new hypervisor support coming?
During the Tuesdays keynote at 34:30 Anton Gostev said, "In the next 12 months two to three hypervisors will be added".

There has to be some speculation around which ones they are?
Come on Anton give us some hints on which ones are coming.

[Gostev]

For sure this one
https://www.scalecomputing.com/press-re ... g-platform

Next hypervisor is being evaluated on the business side however I was already allowed to start hiring a team for it before final decision is taken.

[m.novelli]

I've never heard of Scale Computing , what is under the hood? KVM? Or something proprietary?

Marco

[Gostev]

AFAIK it's KVM-based HCI solution.

[jim.lowry]

@m.novelli
Scale is a mature hyperconverged (HCI) platform leveraging a KVM based hypervisor. It was designed for edge computing needs that can connect back to the data center using a hub and spoke model. There are a bunch of great use cases such as security camera video recordings, remote offices, grocery stores, etc. I recently took some technical training on their platform to help support one of my VCSP partners that is heavily adopting Scale Computing. I was very impressed with their technology. It's a really solid platform.

[olivierlambert]

FYI, we continue to receive requests from users on the "when" for VEEAM support. I'm trying to direct them here as possible, but many of them are pretty shy

Some decided to use our integrated Xen Orchestra backup solution in the meantime. VEEAM Agents are also a workaround when app backup is requested. But for the majority, they'd like to keep their VEEAM subscription.

[Gostev]

Thanks Olivier for your note. I recently decided to continue with this project by running it on fumes in background to try and get the current integration prototype at least to beta quality, in order to be able to meaningfully measure real interest and opportunity size for Veeam. Then I will present the results to the business and it will be up to them to decide whether they want to ship and therefore "marry" this integration (which will require budgeting for permanent R&D resources).

[olivierlambert]

Excellent news! As usual, if you need any assistance or if you have any question about the API, I'll be happy to help

[coolsport00]

I was gonna inquire about an update on both things commented on just above! Great minds!

I was going to ask about Scale, as I heard them speak in the Veeam Booth Theater at VON. Good to hear something is coming on them. And also..I'm currently evaluating XCP-NG, which I think..as a SMB...may be a good alternative fit for us from VMware. But, I'm still testing (will take some time). Main issue for me is currently no Veeam support. So, if you all do get to a Veeam/XCP BETA @Gostev , I'd be open to do some testing on it. Maybe have Rick or someone add something to the Veeam100 group on the Community Hub?

Thanks for all the info!

[florentbchp]

Hi gostev, that is a very good news.
As Olivier said, we can help you lower the cost of entry. I am the lead dev on the backup and disk migration in Xen Orchestra, and I would be very pleased to help you if needed. For example discussing about the different datapath, their strength and their shortcoming.

[helpdeskvsg]

Looks like Scale Computing is a nice alternative for VMware. I also heard that HPE VM Essentials, previously known as Morpheus, is going to be added to Veeam?

[Gostev]

I'm sure sooner or later we will support all hypervisors with significant market share. Understandably, the business needs to see enough real opportunities that will be sufficient to at least cover R&D costs of new integrations.

[florentbchp]

that is for sure, at the end of the day we all want our companies to thrive

We are doing our best to take a significant part of the market, Olivier, as our CEO, can probably provide some interesting metrics.

On my end, we can step in to ensure your R&D cost is well-defined, or we can do some technical exchange, your experience on transferring massive volume of data could help us.

[digerati]

scale is too locked down. I don't want managed hardware and managed hypervisor.
I'd pay VMware their money if their support didn't fall through the floor.
proxmox is like the wild wild west. Lots of features, but it just doesn't feel enterprise-ready.
Nutanix is the worst at everything, most expensive.
Hyper-V is Hyper-V.

XCP-ng is kind of a balance... But I'm not sure why they would worry about veeam integration when their own backup solution is looking so good. Once they've fleshed out their object storage features, I might be pulling the trigger.

[ITP-Stan]

If you think the built-in back-up function of Hypervisors are comparable to what Veeam B&R offers, you must not know enough about all the features Veeam has.

[olivierlambert]

We already do support backup on S3 (even with encryption and backup of backup). However, as said, this is VM backup, we are not application-restore aware, which VEEAM does. So even if our backup features are great, they do not replace an entire VEEAM portfolio, as its their main craft: backup/restore VM, apps and data.

We do want VEEAM support because:
1. it's an enabler: easier to migrate from VMware+VEEAM, you already know VEEAM (so only replacing VMware).
2. it's not a competitor: it doesn't change anything, we already sell the bundle with XO integrated.
3. we do like to work in a ecosystem: we are not passively waiting for VEEAM to support our stack, we are actively working in that direction, because that's the way we like working: with a strong ecosystem. And VEEAM is a major player in here
4. I do believe the future is multi-hypervisor, and VEEAM is a great tool to backup many solutions at once, something we'll never do at Vates, as we are focused only on XCP-ng.

[digerati]

If you think the built-in back-up function of Hypervisors are comparable to what Veeam B&R offers, you must not know enough about all the features Veeam has.

Rude. Or, maybe I just know what I need. Veeam has a great suite of features. The features that I had use for when I was at an MSP versus the features that I have a need for now in the manufacturing industry, quite a bit different.

I still have a few months to decide whether or not we move off of VMware. XCP-ng is my current frontrunner and it seems like it does everything that I need.

[slenagard]

Hi
+1
We also need XCPNG compatibility with VEEAM.

[ITP-Stan]

I don't perceive or intended my message as rude.
Could be the language barrier.

[lmendel]

@ITP-Stan - it is not rude, and this is not language barrier, but I guess it will be best if don't purse this matter any further.

@olivierlambert has commented that XCP-NG doesn't have feature parity with their 'built in' tool and trust me, Veeam is way more than just backups. So I trust his opinion.

Company I work for is actively looking for vSphere alternative, and Proxmox isn't one. It may be fine for home lab, or if you love to tinker, break and fix stuff but it is not enterprise ready in my opinion. There are 2 main things keeping us from using XCP-ng for our customers - Veeam support and storage limitations.

Thanks

[mjr.epicfail]

I think proxmox can be used in an enterprise environment, just not the critical workloads yet.
That way you can scale down you VMware costs to only run the critical worksloads.

It all depends on your current workload/infrastructure design.

[florentbchp]

@imendel : we are working hard to lift the storage limitation (or at least push them as far as possible, because even qcow2 has a maximum size) . This morning I did my first 2+TB disk backup.
And we are doing it as we did for any other feature : build on top of open source software, code is fully open source, developed and supported in house.

[SBaalman]

+1 for XCP-NG and Veeam B&R as well as VRO support

[jmannik]

Do you mean the Conversion Manager?
https://docs.xenserver.com/en-us/xenser ... nager.html
The thing has extreme limitations. vDisks under 2TB, a maximum of 3 vDisks per VM and only a very limited number of guest OS are supported.

Live migration from ESXi to Proxmox without such limitations is simply better.

Sorry very very late reply, but No I do not mean Conversion Manager. I mean the import function on Xen Orchestra.
Yes the 2TB limit is a pain, but ive only run into that issue once, and that was with my Veeam VM.
They are working on raising the 2TB limit, I believe they are in testing for the solution currently, so it will hopefully be close. How many VM's do you work with that have larger than 2TB drives?
I haven't run into a 3 drive limit either? I will have to test that.

[jmannik]

What is the status of Veeam support for XCP-NG? I Would really love to keep using Veeam for my backups but agent backups are not quite getting me where I need to be

[Gostev]

Please see my post above from earlier this month. My hope is to deliver a solid beta this summer, although of course it's nearly impossible to predict due to no dedicated dev team and everything that is being done only done when someone gets some spare cycles.

[florentbchp]

thanks @gostev, feel free to ping me if you or the someone working on it have any question

@skydiver79 : the 2TB limit is still here, but I am sure that there the maximum number of disk of a VM is not 3 . I think it is "soft enforced" to 9 , and can go higher .

[tsukraw]

Not to promote a competitor but hopefully help courage Veeam's business decision around XCP-ng.
Commvault officially supports XCP-ng.

LET'S GO VEEAM!