The conspiracy theories started a few weeks ago when Veeam started to advertise on my (mainly MS infrastructure, featuring MS Hyper-V) blog. Then we saw a countdown clock for a big announcement on the first day of TechEd USA 2011. 1 hour into the keynote, Veeam made their announcement:
“Veeam Software, innovative provider of VMware data protection, disaster recovery and VMware management solutions for virtual datacenter environments, today announced at Tech·Ed North America that it is adding support for Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server to Veeam Backup & Replication, the leading data protection solution for virtual environments used with more than 1.5 million virtual machines (VMs) worldwide”.
Veeam Backup & Replication can:
- 2-in-1 backup and replication for Hyper-V: Veeam’s solution includes replication, which provides near-continuous data protection (near-CDP) and enables the best possible recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTOs and RPOs).
- Changed block tracking for Hyper-V: Veeam’s new hypervisor support includes technology for changed block tracking to enable fast, frequent and efficient backup and replication of all VMs, including those running on Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV).
- Built-in deduplication and compression: Included at no extra charge, these capabilities minimize consumption of network bandwidth and backup storage.
Veeam is a name that is almost synonymous with VMware. Many would consider that if you buy VMware then you buy Veeam. With this new offering for Hyper-V, and with cluster support, you have to think that more than a few Hyper-V architects are considering the wider set of options that are now available to them.