4.1 is here, what about further roadmaps?

[HenrikS]

Hello!

I'm glad to see that you finally implemented file-level restore directly to guests running Windows and Linux.
But what about brick-level restore of databases like Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange?
After what I know, we need to use third-party tools to do this now.
For now, what is best practises regarding this, and is it planned to be implemented in the near feature?

-BR
Henrik Schewe

[dlove]

You should send a similar e-mail/posting to Microsoft asking for the Windows 8 roadmap as well...

[HenrikS]

I see your point, but I'm only asking cause customers of us do not want to have 2 different backupsystems, even though they complete each other.
Result: We are not able to push veeam to our customers since it doesn't do "all" that they think a backupsoftware should do.
So the question is really, when will b&r get those extra features so that _we_ can start selling it?

[TrevorBell]

Henrik, what complete solution do your customers currently use? I would also say any roadmap might be kept a secret to nearer a release date to stop others copying veeams creative new ideas which are coming

[Gostev]

Henrik, thank you for your feedback. We have heard similar requests before, so this kind of feedback definitely rises the priority of this feature.

Unfortunately, our official position is not to disclose the roadmap.

We do realize that there are some customers out there who judge by the roadmap, and we are prepared to lose some deals in short term to competitors with public "We Will Have *.*" -type roadmaps . We are absolutely sure that we will win those customers back when we have actual solution versus promises and vaporware.

We are very proud of what we have achieved for the past 2 years, surpassing the companies who have been on this market for over 10 years. History shows that while we were never the first to start talking about some new features, we are always the first to deliver them – just like it happened with support of vSphere, ESXi support, vStorage API, changed block tracking, instant file level restore, deduplication and many other features.

Not sharing the roadmap or committing any features or dates also allows us to stay flexible and react to feature requests like you have, potentially squeezing those into releases despite of those features being unplanned.

[VMDoug]

I can tell you one of the biggest secrets from our roadmap: we are NOT going to do a complete rewrite

[HenrikS]

Trevor: That's the problem, there is as far as i know, no "complete" solution out there, yet. However, all of our customers require the ability to perform brick level restore of various databases.

Anton: Thank you for your reply, I guess we'll just have to wait and see who delivers first

Dhazelman: I get that your design is based on direct access without agents, but when I see you use logins to perform RPC-calls for VSS in the guest, the road to get either local agents to restore data in databases like exchange, or remote-agents to restore data in ordinary SQLservers looks to me, short.

[HenrikS]

Hello!

First, sorry to bump this thread, but the question still stands..

It just got to my attention that a competitor has released an updated product that now implements brick-level restore function from within a MS-SQL or Exchange DB.
Do you still not have a timeline for when Veeam will be able to deliver this?

BR
Henrik

[Gostev]

We do have some internal timelines, but I cannot share them publicly for the reasons mentioned in my post above.

By the way, if you are talking about Symantec - they have always had brick-level restore functionality, this is not really something new. Reportedly this have been one of the major reasons for many customers to keep Symantec in the environment instead of dumping it completely in favor of Veeam.

[HenrikS]

I was talking about Symantec. The point there is that they now also support deduplicated media and changed block tracking. They seem like the complete solution right now.

[VMDoug]

@HenrikS

While Symantec does now support some of the advanced functionality that Veeam Backup has had for months now, they still require an agent in the VM for brick-level functionality. Also, Symantec does not have its own VSS driver for image level backups as noted in this post on TechTarget: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.c ... /#comments (notice my response there as VMDoug).

So, if you're looking for image level VM Backups, Veeam is still the only solution that fully supports application level VSS as well as both Backup & Replication in a single product (an much less than the Symantec solution). Symantec's solution will not provide a reliable image level backup of Exchange/AD/SQL if it's running on Windows Server 2008.

Veeam does understand the importance of brick-level recovery within applications and we have developers that are very well versed in Exchange, AD and SQL.

[Gostev]

I was talking about Symantec. The point there is that they now also support deduplicated media and changed block tracking. They seem like the complete solution right now.

They only seem so... but the devil is always in details. As Doug already pointed out, they are still missing big on image-level backup front, lacking advanced image-level backup specific functionality Veeam Backup had for ages.

Also, you seem to be missing the fact that "complete solution" costs 5-10 times more than Veeam Backup. Basically, Veeam Backup new license price costs as much as Symantec charges for maintenance... isn't this crazy? And this product will give you backup only (no replication for near-CDP). Backup, however, is only one half of our product. Don't you agree that besides actual backup, on-site replication for high-availability, off-site replication for disaster recovery are equally important in order for customers to be able to meet RTOs, given the challenges image level backup introduces (long restore times due to the size of VM images)?

Again, Symantec always had brick-level restores, and as I've already said above this was one of the main reasons for customers to keep using it to backup certain application servers with, while processing everything else with Veeam (= best solution for image-level backups). It is simply not reasonable to pay 5x more money for much weaker backup solution, which cannot even produce consistent image-level backups.

But I am not trying to argue the fact that we need to add brick-level restores to our product, and remove the last existing reasons to use Symantec for virtual machine backups

Thanks and do keep the feedback coming!

[tjestr]

I would be really thankfull to be able to select datastores as a backup source. Currently you're "only" able to select vms, templates, folders, clusters and hosts. Datastores would be great. (Thinking about impact to storage infrastructure.)

Brick-level restores of databases (SQL/Exchange) would be a real "killer" feature. We would be able to get rid of Symantec and use Veeam as a All-In-One backup solutions.

[tjestr]

Business View integration would be great addition too.
Another thing which would complete the set of Veeam tools would be a chargeback solution.