SureBackup : General Discussion

[rowdy]

(See banner on VeeAm's homepage)

Well, for all of us wanting to see a roadmap for the new version, there we have it.
March 22nd... Will SureBackup be VeeAm Backup 5 or another product to exist side-by-side with VeeAm Backup 4?
I'm very curious what's new, the banner at look promising.
I am hoping for a Windows 7-wow and not a Vista-wow, by the way

[Gostev]

Here is all the information we can share today
Accidentally this blog post also has answers to your questions!
http://veeammeup.com/2010/02/surebackup ... efing.html

[UPDATE] March 31, 2010
Consolidated SureBackup feedback so far - links to all reviews, blogs, articles.
SureBackup – 1 week later

[rowdy]

Thanks, I hadn't seen that post yet.
I'm really curious to learn how the way I look at backups is going to change

[Gostev]

Dramatically! We have started talking with some industry analysts about this (under NDA), and they all were very impressed, and thought that this is going to be huge. So far nobody felt we are making too big of a deal out of this invention.

[davidshq]

Ahh, you are killing me here!

[Gostev]

New blog post about SureBackup
SureBackup – What the Analysts are Saying

[glennsantacruz]

Uhm, how can I convince you that I'm an analyst so that I can share in the excitement? I'll be happy to sign an NDA...

[davidshq]

haha. Same here.

[TrevorBell]

[rowdy]

Usually it stands to reason the name of a new product (might have) has something to do with the feature.
But that's a little strange then, in this case.
SureBackup..
As in: 'Sure, it's gonna make a backup for you!'
or 'Make sure you don't forget to backup!'.
Both are not very exciting nor new, you already get notified by e-mail if something goes right or wrong.
And if they are now going to say that the new version is going to make sure the backup has been right, would imply that currently VeeAm Backup isn't really making any good backups.

So, the new feature may not have something to do with this name at all then...

[Gostev]

would imply that currently VeeAm Backup isn't really making any good backups.

Have you ever done test restores from backups created by Veeam, just to prove yourself this is not so?

[antivir]

Counter on the main page - what is the time offset?

[Gostev]

Everyone should be seeing time left until March 22nd, 12am local time.

[Gostev]

OK, so just 5 days left!

Having briefings with different analysts almost every day these days (had 4 just today, 1 hour long)...
@vmdoug is absolutely exhausted being main spokesman

Interest is so high, and the feedback is absolutely amazing!

To keep the waiting more interesting for you, we just updated the analysts feedback blog post with the new quotes:
SureBackup – What the Analysts are Saying

Find more big hints there

[schaffeb]

I'm hoping SureBackup contains the ability to do message level backup and restore with exchange. That would be wonderful!

[rowdy]

Yeah, sure.....


(sorry, couldn't help it )

[davidshq]

i like schaffeb's dream...and we can all dream, right?

[Gostev]

Since we are all dreaming... why Exchange only?
Don't you all have tons of other apps running in your production?

From the top of my head:
• Active Directory
• Exchange
• SharePoint
• SQL
• MySQL
• Oracle
• CRM
• CMS (Content Management System for web)
• Project Tracking Systems
• Ticket Tracking Systems
• Order Tracking Systems
• Bug Tracking Systems
• and of course various custom home-grown apps everyone loves so much...

How much effort does it take TODAY for you to restore a single application item from image-level backup of these applications? And would not it be cool to have simple item-level restore capability for any application at all?

[Gostev]

I'm hoping SureBackup contains the ability to do message level backup and restore with exchange. That would be wonderful!

Ben, I am interested to learn more on how this would work in ideal world from administrator (or help desk person) and end user perspective. Something like this scenario: CEO deleted some extremely important confidential email and needs it back desperately.

Option 1. CEO calls up help desk and asks to recover it.
- What does he tell them? Subject? Approx. deletion time? Content?
- How help desk person locates the email. They will need ability to browse through and read some CEO emails... is it even allowed for help desk stuff to access CEO email? Especially given that this email is highly confidential?
- When deleted email is found - is it injected into his mailbox? Forwarded to him as attachment? Or as PST file?

Option 2. CEO goes to some web portal, of older copy of mailbox, finds the required email in it, and recovers data from it (copy/paste, or clicks button next to it to recover back into production mailbox).

Option 3. Some other way? Again, looking for what would be ideal implementation of item-level recoveries in your opinion.

Of course, everyone else's user stories are also appreciated on this matter. No worries about derailing this thread, I will move these posts into a separate topic later.

[rowdy]

Since this is a dream-only topic, it would be amazing if someone dreamed up an application that could do all that without knowing the specifics of every application in the world. It almost seems impossible but I guess we'll know if we're dreaming in about 5 more days...

[rowdy]

Ben, I am interested to learn more on how this would work in ideal world from administrator (or help desk person) and end user perspective. Something like this scenario: CEO deleted some extremely important confidential email and needs it back desperately.

When it's the CEO, you can just walk to the printer instead. Those people always print everything (and leave it there for anyone to find and read) (and (hopefully) they never read forums )

But more to the point, the web-portal seems like the best idea, self-servicing is the best option anytime when it comes down to restoring single messages in this fashion.

[Gostev]

Since this is a dream-only topic, it would be amazing if someone dreamed up an application that could do all that without knowing the specifics of every application in the world. It almost seems impossible but I guess we'll know if we're dreaming in about 5 more days...

Such "universal" application is nice, but is it really needed? Every server application in the world has at least one client application "knowing the specifics" of corresponding server application. In other words, to tie this closer to the feature we are discussing here, there is no server application without at least one client application that is able to extract individual items from the server. And as administrator, you will be using this application today anyway.

Just to illustrate this concept in real-life example, here's what our MVP Tom is doing today for SQL table-level restores. I am going to assume Tom is talking about Microsoft SQL server, and so the application he is using is Microsoft SQL Management Studio.

Since Veeam supports file level restore, you can pretty much already do database level restores with Veeam. Simply dismount the database you want to restore from MSSQL, restore the database files with Veeam FLR, and then remount the database. We've done this with great success with both MS SQL and Oracle databases.

Heck, we've even been able to restore individual tables by temporarily mounting the restored database file and then moving the table either with an export/import, or by simply using "Create as Select".

[Gostev]

But more to the point, the web-portal seems like the best idea, self-servicing is the best option anytime when it comes down to restoring single messages in this fashion.

Thanks. This definitely makes sense.

Taking this idea further, what would you say if there was some HTTP address that CEO (or anyone else in the company) was able to type into the browser, and that address would take them to the most familiar Outlook Web Access "pointing" to, say, 1 month or 5 days old copy of their mailbox. Needless to say, everyone would have to logon to OWA with their domain credentials to get access to own mailbox. From there, CEO could find that important confidential email and recover information from it all by himself. So you no longer need to give help desk personnel rights to browse the content of CEO's mailbox backup.

[tsightler]

Actually, I think I mixed a little Oracle and MSSQL in the same sentence there. MSSQL has the option for simply mounting and dismounting database files, but I think this is a little more complicated with Oracle. But then I used some Oracle syntax "CREATE TABLE <table> as SELECT * from <oldtable>". For MSSQL I think this would be more like "SELECT * into <table> from <oldtable>" but the concept is the same.

BTW, I've stayed completely out of the whole SureBackup thing because it was a little too much "marketing" for me. Products rarely seem to live up to such hyped-up annoncement, but I'll list my personal killer feature.

Allow the deployment of an agent, directly into the VM, which allows that host to basically "see" the VBK/VBR files as a mounted filesystem, with the various rollback points as simple directories similar to the way VSS Folder snapshots work. As an alternative a simple agent which allows you to dynamically mount a specific rollback directly from the host VM. At that point the administrators of the systems, or helpdesk personnel, could potentially perform restores without special knowledge of the actual backup product in use.

[Gostev]

Tom, so basically you want this command to work (pardon my bash):

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/vmware-mount.pl /mnt/share/vdisk.vmdk 1 /media/vmdk-content

But with vdisk.vmdk being inside VBK file, which in turns sits on some remote backup storage?

[tsightler]

Well, I think of more as a "mini-version" of the restore utility Veeam already has. Basically, when I run a restore with the Veeam console, Veeam mounts the VBK/VBR to the Windows host but with the current Veeam implementation you have to teach admins or helpdesk people how to access and use the Veeam server. Having a helpdesk person accessing the same server that can overwrite your Oracle database server, or any VM in your organization for that matter, as simply as restoring a single file is a little scary.

What I'm thinking is a little "mini" version of the restore functionality of the Veeam console that can be accessed directly from the server in question. Maybe a little icon in the system tray that the server administrator can click on and run the FLR functionality for just that specific server.

We actually use a product that has a similar feature set for our desktops called Atempo LiveBackup. Basically it's a little agent that sits each client and backs up the users local files, or alternatively the entire system, pretty much continuously, although it will simply cache changes when disconnected from the network. The "server" does file level de-dupe so you can back up huge numbers of workstations with minimal space since most workstations have lots of duplication of files. If you choose, the user can be given the option to be able to click an icon and restore their own files/folders, including any revisions, for whatever the retention time is, and, in the event of a total loss we can create a restore image to restore the entire system. Having a similar functionality for the servers would be awesome.

[Gostev]

Yes, I understand this. But today our FLR is dependant on Windows components, and I know you use Linux "whenever possible". So I was thinking of solution that could work on Linux VMs without requiring us to actually create FLR components for Linux.

[tsightler]

Well, to be fair, while we use Linux "whenever possible" unfortunately, that's only about 50% of our servers. Just too many third-party products that depend on Windows. A command-line variant for Linux would be good for those servers, maybe a simply script which just list the backups/rollbacks for that host and allows you to mount them.

[Gostev]

Ahh, @vmdoug spills the beans on SureBackup!
Veeam SureBackup: Pre-release Interview with Doug Hazelman

[withanh]

Just listened to it. Sounds like it's an announcement, not a product release. Does that mean that we don't get v5 on Monday?