SureBackup : General Discussion

[markfellows]

Few quick questions:

Any rough ideas when the next version of Veeam Backup & Replication will be released (to include SureBackup)?

If we purchase Veeam Backup & Replication now is there any maintenance or upgrade plan we can also purchase so we could upgrade to the latest version when it arrives?

Finally and I know this is a long shot but have any rough guidelines for the pricing of the latest version of the product been established yet?

Mark.

[Gostev]

Hi Mark,

I have merged your topic with the existing discussion.

1. We are planning to release Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 in Q3 2010.

2. You will get the upgrade to v5 Enterprise Edition free if you purchase v4 until June 18th, please follow this link for more information:
http://www.veeam.com/go/free-enterprise-upgrade

Note that this is a limited time offer, so if you purchase v4 after June 18th, you will get free upgrade to v5 Standard Edition only. With Veeam, all upgrades are and have always been free for customers on maintenance. However, starting June 18th, new customers will have to pay for upgrade from Standard to Enterprise edition. The cost of the upgrade will be the MSRP difference between these editions.

3. Please refer to the following document for EMEA pricing of both Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 editions:
http://www.veeam.com/files/veeam_backup ... _cs_ee.pdf

Thanks!

[markfellows]

Anton,

Once again thanks for the quick response and the information.

Keep up the good work, the support in these forums from the Veeam product team is excellent. I've been very impressed with the Veeam product during my evaluation and if all goes well with the expected features in 5 it will only improve an already excellent product.

We're thinking of purchasing Veeam Essentials, will there be a version 5 of Veeam Essentials (the equivalent of Enterprise, which includes recovery of individual Exchange items) and will this free upgrade offer still apply?

Finally what is the usually maintenance cost (% of full license cost)?

Thanks again,

Mark

[Gostev]

Mark, I will get you the answers on this next week (I am not involved in Sales, so I don't know details on all the SKUs and maintenance).

[markfellows]

Thanks, your help is much appreciated.

[Gostev]

Hi Mark, I got those answers for you!

1. Current customer with Veeam Essentials v4 will also have ability to upgrade to Enteprise Edition for free if they want.
2. Veeam Essentials v5 will be based off Standard Edition (so no universal application items restore).
3. Maintenance is 20% of list price.

Hope this helps!

[markfellows]

Thanks Anton, very helpful.

[markfellows]

Anton,

Sorry, yet another question!!

As only standard edition is available in Veeam Essential I’m now considering purchasing the standard licences which I believe are around £400 per processor (6 cores).

If I’m backing up just one dual quad core Esxi server would I be right in thinking that I would need just 2 licenses. Would this still be the case when using the new verification and universal application item restore features in v5 or do these new features require a second server and hence a further two licenses?

Thanks,

Mark.

[Gostev]

Mark, I think you misunderstood. Veeam Essentials v5 will contain Standard Edition of Backup v5. But, if you buy Veeam Essentials v4 until June 18th, you will get free upgrade to Enterprise Edition of Backup v5 when it is available.

In other words, the only way to get Veeam Essentials with Enteprise Edition of Backup v5, is to buy it until June 18th.

Does it make sense?

[markfellows]

Anton,

Thanks, that makes sense.

Out of interest what would be the answer be to the second question from my previous post (see below)?

"If I’m backing up just one dual quad core Esxi server would I be right in thinking that I would need just 2 licenses. Would this still be the case when using the new verification and universal application item restore features in v5 or do these new features require a second server and hence a further two licenses?"

Mark.

[Gostev]

No, second ESX host is not required, you can use your production host if it has spare capacity - running test VMs will not require much resources, as these VMs will not be serving production workload. In case you decide to use separate ESX host for SureBackup, it should not require Veeam Backup license, as we currently only require licenses for source ESX hosts you run backup and replication jobs against...

[markfellows]

Thanks Anton for all your assistance during our testing phase, I’ve been very please with the Veeam solution and the accompanying support.

We will be purchasing Veeam Backup & Replication in the next few weeks.

Once again keep up the good work.

Mark

[donikatz]

Anton-- I'm right now setting up some convoluted local replication jobs in order to achieve instant-on-capable "restores" on the SAN and my thinking lead me back to this thread. Do I infer correctly from your earlier post to Tom that VBU5 with SureBackup will be able to be leveraged for instant-on restores, not just for recovery testing? Right? So if my goal is to backup directly to local SAN and be able to immediately power up a backup, I won't have to use replication for this, I'll be able to use backup?

(I'll admit the only thing I miss from vRanger is how backups could be raw without having to decompress back to bootable state -- was very useful in certain scenarios.)

Thanks

[Gostev]

Doni, yes - your understanding is correct, this is something that would be possible with our technology.

(I'll admit the only thing I miss from vRanger is how backups could be raw without having to decompress back to bootable state -- was very useful in certain scenarios.)

If you don't mind the disk space required, we provide "raw" backups with VM Copy jobs (which produce complete ready-to-go VM copies).

[donikatz]

Fantastic thanks.

Fair enough re VM Copy. Unfortunately those don't support synthetics/CBT right? (or am I mistaken?)

[Gostev]

Yes, it does full VM copy every time.

[donikatz]

Btw, the issue for me isn't the disk space -- I have plenty -- it's the job time windows. That's why VM Copy isn't useful for regular on-SAN instant-boot restorable images and why we're using replication that supports synthetic backups & CBT. So very much looking forward to testing out VMBU5's hopefully much more elegant possibilities. Thanks!

[seo]

Hi Gostev,
License upgrade question: We are currrently on maintenenance for next 2,5 years. As I understand we can upgrade to 5.0 Enterprise for free, but do we have to do anything in this matter other than download new version when it arrives, Any registration somewhere? I assume we have to tell you that we will be using v5.0 Enterprise and want our next maintenance fee to be at Enterprise level. But where do we do this registration?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Svein,

That's correct. If you're current on maintenance when version 5 is released, you can get an upgrade to Enterprise Edition for free. You can ask for an Enterprise license from your sales rep within 3 months after Veeam Backup version 5 becomes generally available. Additionaly, I recommend that you fill-in the free upgrage registration form below:

http://www.veeam.com/go/free-enterprise ... ?ad=backup

Thank you!

[Gostev]

Svein, Vitaly is correct - you will need to claim the free upgrade option within 3 months after 5.0 availability, in other words you will not be upgraded to the Enteprise Edition "automatically". In fact, the license that will be automatically generated and sent to you initially will be for Standard Edition.

[bbesse]

Ok I have a question about SureBackup. Nice and simple.
We use a White Boxe NFS based soteage for our VMs and it is working great.
Veeam backup 4.1.1 does not support backups from NFS using SAN mode, we are limited to Network Mode.

Will that change using SureBackup?

Brent Besse
Royal Roads University
Victoria BC
Canada

[Gostev]

Hello Brent, VMware vStorage API for Data Protection only supports block based protocols (FC and iSCSI) for direct access (SAN) mode. NFS is not block based, which is why it cannot be supported by definition. This is limitation of vStorage API SAN mode, and so not something we can address from our side.

SureBackup does not change that, and generally speaking, has nothing to deal with how backups are performed with Veeam.

I recommend that you use Virtual Appliance mode instead, this essentially gives you direct storage access via ESX I/O stack. See the adjacent thread, it almost talks about your scenario and how using Virtual Appliance mode helps to increase backup performance comparing to the Network mode.

Thanks!