VEEAM rocks....

[psydii]

I had crippled a couple of my 'enterprise services', not so badly that the end users noticed, just badly enough that I couldn't manage them properly.

 

A lot of messing with the way SQL server was set up was on the horizon, and that would interrupt all the LoB applications that had a dependencies on that.

 

It was going to be messy.

 

Veeam Enterprise with SureBackup to the rescue:

• Boot a 'lab' consisting of the core servers required to run the service in an isolated network from the LATEST BACKUPS of the live system.
  
• Mess around, take snapshots, ruin it, start over. All on exact replicas of the live systems.
  
• Figure out how to fix it.
  
• Reset the Lab.
  
• Test the steps again.
  
• Shutdown the lab.
  
• Schedule a time to repeat the steps on the live environment.
  
• Success.
  

 

To the outside that appears as "Right first time"

 

Previously when I've had to do things like this, I've had to ship the vmdks/vhds to huge external drives and create replica infrastructure by hand. VEEAM took care of all of that, saving me several days work.

 

I am a happy chap.

Edited August 30, 2013 by psydii

[sparkeh]

Yes, VEEAM does rock

And v7 of B&R is even better

[sister_annex]

Best thing we have bought! not got chance to try V7 yet, but will be playing when I'm back on monday

[sparkeh]

Oh something to watch out for.

If you have v6 Enterprise and have a valid maintenance contract you can upgrade to v7 Enterprise for free but you will also be offered an upgrade to Enterprise PLUS for free - be aware that although the Plus licence upgrade is free, your contract price will bumped up.

[Cache]

So who's on version 7?

 

I was thinking about upgrading last week but backed out of it in the end to focus on something else.

 

Just wondering if there's any gotcha's or what the increased compression/deduplication was like if anyone configured it?

[kmount]

So who's on version 7?

 

I was thinking about upgrading last week but backed out of it in the end to focus on something else.

 

Just wondering if there's any gotcha's or what the increased compression/deduplication was like if anyone configured it?

 

 

No real gotchas, all of our upgrades went without a hitch. (it checks pre-reqs etc and a couple of our older sites failed those and the installer helpfully fixed the necessary things for us)

 

Its worth noting the change in compression level on the jobs if upgrading from v6 to v7. If you had a job previously set on "Optimal", it will now be on "High" (it's the same because there's a 'new' optimal that aims to use less resources)

 

The other thing to make sure you pay attention to is parallel processing which has reduced the backup window on most of our customers by around 35%. (though it's an all or nothing setting globally at the moment so may not be viable in your particular scenario)

 

It's worth also noting the throughput reporting has changed considerably so it looks "lower" than it did before but it's actually not, it's just reporting in a way deemed more useful. (ie, it reports on virtual disk processing)

 

Other than that I've not really noticed any difference on upgrades but I've not messed too much with things though I am interested in exploring the storage snapshot functionality for HP storage but that's for later.

 

Tidied away upgrade in ~20 mins tops.

 

Useful thread to have a read through if you're interested - v7 changes in processing rate calculations | view topic

Edited August 31, 2013 by kmount

[zag]

Veeeam is one of the greatest piece of software I have ever bought!

 

So whats new in Version 7, just upgrading now for free

[robjduk]

Veeam is such a great piece of software I weep for those still dicking about with tapes. I am on 6.5 but only saw 7 was out at the end of the holidays and thought if something went wrong I would loose all last terms things so am aiming at half term.

 

The only thing I would ever change would be the way it highlights "restore entire VM" by default.

[sparkeh]

Nice feature in 7 is how copy jobs can be triggered by the end of a backup job. It was a bit annoying that in 6 you had to have separate jobs.

[zag]

Veeam 7 is totally rocking by socks recently

 

I've just built a new SSD based backup server so now I can backup our entire file server in 45mins!! it used to take 12hrs with backupexec.

 

Add to the a simple interface, automatic deduplication, great reporting, individual file restores and you have a world class backup system. Awesome!

 

 

Apparently our 1 Gigabit network is now the bottleneck. hmmmm, 10gbit upgrade time?

Edited September 20, 2013 by zag

[Davit2005]

 

The only thing I would ever change would be the way it highlights "restore entire VM" by default.

 

Here, Here or at least a confirmation box before the final step. How many times I've gone back to make sure I'm not restoring the whole VM :-$

 

I've upgraded from v6 to v6.5 and now to v7 without any problems, we still use tapes for the time being for off site backups. But at least the native support for tapes in v7 stops us having to use the useless Backup Exec 12

Edited September 20, 2013 by Davit2005