A customer recently asked me how often they needed to do a “full” backup with Veeam so they would have a full backup in the event there was corruption of one of their differentials. With Veeam Backup’s synthetic backup, this scenario doesn’t exist!!

Veeam uses a synthetic backup which means EVERY backup gives you a full backup, at incremental speed, in a file called jobname.vbk. This .vbk file does NOT depend on any past differentials ( which have the extension .vrb).

The fantastic thing about synthetic backup is never taking the time and space penalty after your 1st backup for a full backup, with all the comfort of a traditional full backup.

The veeammeup blog has a good technical description of this wizardry of how synthetic backup works, which I duplicate here.

The way Veeam’s Synthetic Backup works is that after the first full backup, all subsequent backups are incremental, meaning just the changes from the last backup run, forever. Veeam Backup “injects” the changes into the full recovery file (.VBK) and then also saves any data replaced during this process into the reversed incremental changes file (.VRB). The .VBK file is always a full recovery file and the largest file in the directory. The .VBK file also has the most current modified date as it gets updated after each backup cycle.

The .VRB files do not change, as they contain the .VBK data blocks which were replaced by incremental data for that particular incremental backup run. To restore or roll-back to a particular date/time, all related .VRB files are applied to the .VBK file in the required order to get you back to that point-in-time.

The retention policy specifies how many of the .VRB files you want to keep, this also then corresponds to how “far” you can roll-back. If the retention policy is set to 14, then the 15th time the backup job runs it will delete the oldest .VRB file.

If you archive the .VBK and associated .VRB files as a set to tape, you can recover them back to disk if needed and import them into Veeam Backup to roll-back or recover to any point in time in that set.

So to be clear, if you accidently delete the .VRB file(s) you can get back to your full, as the .VBK is the “full” file. (This should never happen, but I had a customer who had an admin delete these files on their filer to free up some space before they knew the implications).

Veeam has announced that the next release of Veeam Backup and Replication will have some exciting new features,  including the new  SureBackup technology we have covered in this blog before.

Another major change in Veeam Backup and Replication 5.0 ( Scheduled for Q3 2010) is that there will now be TWO editions, Standard Edition 5.0, and Enterprise Edition 5.0

Note that ALL THE CURRENT FEATURES of Veeam Backup and Replication 4.1.1 are in Standard Edition, plus all the new 5.0 features. NO current features have been removed and moved to the Enterprise edition, which is very good for existing customers. All existing Veeam Backup and Replication Customers ( on maintenance) will get 5.0 Standard Edition at no charge.  Veeam is creating an Enterprise Edition to target new high end features that not all customers may want to pay a premium for.

Currently, there are differences in three areas between Standard and Enterprise Edition:

Recovery verification: Standard Edition will provide basic recovery verification (verifying the latest backup
of a VM by manually mounting and testing the backup file), while Enterprise Edition will offer automated
and more advanced recovery verification (including testing any available restore point, not just the most
recent one).

 Windows guest file system indexing: Standard Edition will maintain an index of Windows guest files in
current backups, while Enterprise Edition will also include files in archived backups, for using google like search functionality.

Universal application‐item recovery: Enterprise Edition will include universal application‐item recovery
(Standard Edition will not). This is the ability to restore individual application objects, such as exchange email
messages, directory objects, or database records, from a regular backup.  Note that individual file level recovery is STILL available in both editions, just like it always has been.

Customers who are current on maintenance will receive Standard Edition v5.0 as a regular product update at no additional charge. Standard Edition will include all the functionality in the current v4.1 software plus the major new features described in this blog, and the usual fixes and improvements.

For customers that want the enhanced functionality of Enterprise Edition,  the Enterprise upgrade fee will be waived on licenses purchased on or before August 31st, 2010. You must have maintenance on all sockets purchased all the way up to the time you decide to upgrade, no later than 3 months after the 5.0 Enterprise release. ( We recommend customers always stay on maintenance, so this should be a non-issue).

Many customers want to know if they should upgrade to Enterprise, or stick with Standard?  For customers that want the enterprise features mentioned, you should upgrade. But Note that all FUTURE purchases of Enterprise will be $330 per socket MORE expensive than Standard edition.  (MSRP is 659 on Standard, 989 on Enterprise.) With this in mind, you may want to buy any more sockets you anticipate you will need this year BEFORE June 18th to save money.

If you do NOT need the new Enterprise features, then you may not want to take advantage of the free upgrade to Enterprise because all future Enterprise sockets will be $330 more expensive than Standard sockets. In the case you don’t need the new Enterprise features now or in the future, you may want to stick with Standard Edition.

If there are any questions on the new Veeam Backup and Replication 5.0, please contact HiperLogic and we will help you determine what is best for your particular situation

SureBackup is a major new announcement from Veeam that was revealed on March 22nd ( See http://www.veeam.com/surebackup/) that allows **automated** validation of your backup jobs, a first in the virtualization ( or physical ) world.

SureBackup does this magic by booting all of the VM’s in your backup image in a sandbox environment ( Called the Virtual Lab ) to ensure your VM’s are 100% consistent and restorable.

SureBackup at a high level works by dynamically mounting a on-the fly NFS datastore that Veeam creates that presents VM’s directly from the compressed de-duped backup images. ( This is the Veeam Patent-Pending technology). This Virtual Lab is setup on an isolated network (customizable) and dedicated resource pool (customizable) on your existing ESX server farm. *NO* extra storage is required since it runs directly from the backup file.

A beneficial side-effect of this is universal item level recovery, for example you can pull an individual Exchange mailbox, SQL Server table, or any other “application” specific item that is not just a plain file ( Veeam already has file level recovery ) through the SureBackup Virtual Lab. You can run these VM’s directly from the compressed de-duplicated files, you aren’t required to extract or pull out the VMDK’s and therefore don’t require any additional storage space.

The SureBackup feature will release with the next version of Veeam Backup and Replication 5 ( sometime late summer). This is a simple upgrade, and you will be able to use this feature with your old Veeam Backup 4.0 backups and your new 5.0 backups.