One of the areas that I stumbled upon was having to enable something during the process to take advantage of the new team’s functionality above so wanted to document that also.

Firstly, head on over to the download link posted in the blog linked above this post will also give you a short overview on what you can expect in v5.

Once you have that downloaded, you are good to close down the console and begin the upgrade process, advice here is to make sure all jobs are finished and nothing is scheduled for the next 10 minutes maybe longer depending on the size of the environment.

Run through the pretty simple next next upgrade process.

Then open the console and check you have the correct version. By heading here.

By selecting the about option, you are going to then see this following screen to show you your build number and version.

This shows we have successfully updated our server to v5 and we can start protecting those Microsoft Teams objects.

But before we can do that especially if you are an existing Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 user then you will need to enable this option on the organisation.

What you are going to find is that the Microsoft Teams check box is unselected, if you wish to protect this within the organisation then select that checkbox

If you are a green field first time installation of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 and you are starting with v5 or newer, then when you add your organisation it is going to look like this.

You can see there that this is automatically selected.

As well as making things much faster when it comes to backing up the data but more importantly the granular recovery and speed of that recovery back into your Office 365 environment.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams data was already being protected when Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 was protecting your SharePoint Online environment, however when it comes to recovery it wasn’t as nice and granular to perform those recoveries. There was a great post back in 2019 talking about this way of protecting Teams data and restoring by Veeam Vanguard Falko Banaszek.

Now with v5 we have a much better way to not only capture the Microsoft Teams data but also a much faster way to recover granular items with the new Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Teams functionality.

In terms of what granular levels of recovery can we get to, well this would include your team channels, settings, permissions as well as those files and data also stored within Microsoft Teams. Then there is also the search functionality being able to search across chat and files to find the objects you require for recovery. Then for the final step of the restore you can either just grab individual files or grab multiple files and chats and restore those back to Microsoft Office 365.

The one thing not possible is backing up those GIFs but I feel the internet has a big repository of these some place already.

Proxy placement and deployment

With every Veeam release there is always a focus on Performance and Scalability, this release of v5 is no different. The ability to leverage concurrent tasks with SharePoint backup making those backups faster, but also around proxies and scalability, the number of supported proxies for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 has been increased by something silly like 5 times.

Prior to this release as well the proxies that deal with the movement of data between Microsoft Office 365 and the repository location had to be joined to a trusted domain the same as the Veeam Backup & Replication server, for most cases this is fine but there are some environments where this is not possible or wanted. V5 brings around the ability to now deploy those proxies in a non-domain joined fashion. Not only that but the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 management server also does not need to be joined to a domain. This really does enable complete flexibility and scalability in those required environments.

Cloud Field Day – Demo Time

For those that know me and the Veeam Product Strategy team you know we don’t leave home without the ability to perform a live demo, especially when it comes to Cloud Field Day and big events like that. Back earlier in 2020 when we were able to do a session there, we decided to show off Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 in general but also highlighting the features and functionality that have now arrived in v5 of the product.

You can see that demo below.

Free

A lot of us will be running our own personal Office 365, and for that we still have you covered with our community edition, this is going to enable you to protect your Office 365 data to either disk or directly to object storage. You can find out more of that here.

Release Notes

There is so much more than what I have just mentioned here in this post but as always I think we do a great job of noting down all of the What’s New features and functionality in the new releases here.

Download

You can download the update or the whole install file by using this link

I will also be recording the update process with my current v4 version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 to this latest version, just to highlight some of these new features but also how super simple and easy the upgrade process is. You will find that appear here on my YouTube channel and alongside the existing Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 demos.

Installing Azure PowerShell

In order for us to start this automated deployment we need to install locally on our machine the Azure PowerShell module.

More details of that can be found here.

Run the following code on your system.

if ($PSVersionTable.PSEdition -eq 'Desktop' -and (Get-Module -Name AzureRM -ListAvailable)) {

    Write-Warning -Message ('Az module not installed. Having both the AzureRM and ' +

      'Az modules installed at the same time is not supported.')

} else {

    Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber -Scope CurrentUser

Select either [Y] Yes or [A] Yes to All as this is an untrusted repository. You can also change currentuser to allusers if you wish to enable for all users on the local machine.

Breaking down the code

This section is going to talk through the steps taken in the code, the way in which this will work though is by taking this code from the GitHub Repository you will be able to modify the variables and begin testing yourself without any actual code changes.

First we need to connect to our Azure account, this will provide you with a web browser to login to your Azure Portal, if you are using MFA then this will enable you to authenticate this way also.

# Connect to Azure with a browser sign in token

Connect-AzAccount

Next we want to start defining what, where and how we want this to look in our Azure accounts. It should be pretty straight forward to understand the following but

locName = Azure Location

Publisher Name = Veeam

Offer Name = is the particular offering we wish to deploy from the publisher, there are quite a few so expect to see other options using this method.

SkuName = what product sku of the offering do you wish to use

version = what version of the product

# Set the Marketplace image

$locName="EASTUS"

$pubName="veeam"

$offerName="veeam-backup-replication"

$skuName="veeam-backup-replication-v10"

$version = "10.0.1"

The following are aligned to the environment.

resourcegroup = which resource group do you wish to use this can be an existing resource group or a new name

vmname = what name do you wish your Veeam Backup & Replication server to have within your Azure environment

vmsize = this is the image that will be used, my advice to pick the supported sizes, this is the default size used for production environments.

# Variables for common values

$resourceGroup = "CadeTestingVBR"

$vmName = "CadeVBR"

$vmSize = "Standard_F4s_v2"

Next we need to agree to the license terms of deploying from the marketplace for this specific VM Image. The following commands will do this.

Get-AzVMImage -Location $locName -PublisherName $pubName -Offer $offerName -Skus $skuName -Version $version



$agreementTerms=Get-AzMarketplaceterms -Publisher "veeam" -Product "veeam-backup-replication" -Name "10.0.1"



Set-AzMarketplaceTerms -Publisher "veeam" -Product "veeam-backup-replication" -Name "10.0.1" -Terms $agreementTerms -Accept

If you wish to review the terms then you can do by running the following command. Spoiler alert the command will give you a link to a txt file to save you the hassle here is the link in the txt file where you will find the Veeam EULA – https://www.veeam.com/eula.html

Get-AzMarketplaceTerms -Publisher "veeam" -Product "veeam-backup-replication" -Name "10.0.1"

Next we need to start defining how our Veeam Backup & Replication server will look in regards to configuration of network, authentication and security.

I also wanted to keep this script following best practice and not containing any usernames or passwords so the first config setting is to gather the username and password for your deployed machine in a secure string.

# Create user object

$cred = Get-Credential -Message "Enter a username and password for the virtual machine."

Create a resource group

# Create a resource group



New-AzResourceGroup -Name $resourceGroup -Location $locname -force

Create a subnet configuration

# Create a subnet configuration

$subnetConfig = New-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name "cadesubvbr" -AddressPrefix 10.0.0.0/24

Create a virtual network

# Create a virtual network

$vnet = New-AzVirtualNetwork -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Location $locName `

  -Name CadeVBRNet -AddressPrefix 10.0.0.0/24 -Subnet $subnetConfig

Create a public IP Address

# Create a public IP address and specify a DNS name

$pip = New-AzPublicIpAddress -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Location $locName `

  -Name "CadeVBR$(Get-Random)" -AllocationMethod Static -IdleTimeoutInMinutes 4

Create inbound security group rule for RDP

# Create an inbound network security group rule for port 3389

$nsgRuleRDP = New-AzNetworkSecurityRuleConfig -Name CadeVBRSecurityGroupRuleRDP  -Protocol Tcp `

  -Direction Inbound -Priority 1000 -SourceAddressPrefix * -SourcePortRange * -DestinationAddressPrefix * `

  -DestinationPortRange 3389 -Access Allow

Create network security group

# Create a network security group

$nsg = New-AzNetworkSecurityGroup -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Location $locName `

  -Name CadeVBRNetSecurityGroup -SecurityRules $nsgRuleRDP

Create a virtual network

# Create a virtual network card and associate with public IP address and NSG

$nic = New-AzNetworkInterface -Name CadeVBRNIC -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Location $locName `

  -SubnetId $vnet.Subnets[0].Id -PublicIpAddressId $pip.Id -NetworkSecurityGroupId $nsg.Id

Next we need to define what the virtual machine configuration is going to look in our environment using the above environment configurations.

#Create a virtual machine configuration



$vmConfig = New-AzVMConfig -VMName "$vmName" -VMSize $vmSize 

$vmConfig = Set-AzVMPlan -VM $vmConfig -Publisher $pubName -Product $offerName -Name $skuName

$vmConfig = Set-AzVMOperatingSystem -Windows -VM $vmConfig -ComputerName $vmName -Credential $cred

$vmConfig = Set-AzVMSourceImage -VM $vmConfig -PublisherName $pubName -Offer $offerName -Skus $skuName -Version $version

$vmConfig = Add-AzVMNetworkInterface -Id $nic.Id -VM $vmConfig

Then now we have everything we need we can now begin deploying the machine.

# Create a virtual machine

New-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Location $locName -VM $vmConfig

If you saw the video demo you would have seen that the deployment really does not take long at all, I actually think using this method is a little faster either way less than 5 minutes to quickly deploy a Veeam Backup & Replication server in Microsoft Azure.

Now that we have our machine there is one thing we want to do to ensure the next stages of configuration run smoothly. Out of the box there is a requirement for Azure PowerShell to be installed to be able to use the Azure Compute accounts and Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure. The installer is already on the deployed box and if we go through manually you would have to just install that msi instead in this script we remote run a powershell script from GitHub that will do it for you.

# Start Script installation of Azure PowerShell requirement for adding Azure Compute Account

Set-AzVMCustomScriptExtension -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup `

    -VMName $vmName `

    -Location $locName `

    -FileUri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MichaelCade/veeamdr/master/AzurePowerShellInstaller.ps1 `

    -Run 'AzurePowerShellInstaller.ps1' `

    -Name DemoScriptExtension

At this stage the PowerShell installation for me has required a reboot but it is very fast and generally up within 10-15 seconds. So we run the following command to pause the command before then understanding what that public IP is and then start a Windows Remote Desktop to that IP address.

Start-Sleep -s 15



Write-host "Your public IP address is $($pip.IpAddress)"

mstsc /v:$($pip.IpAddress)

Now, this might seem like a long winded approach to getting something up and running but with this combined into one script and you having the ability to create all of this on demand brings a powerful story to being able to recover workloads into Microsoft Azure.

In the next parts to this post will concentrate on a configuration script which is where we will configure Veeam Backup & Replication to attach the Microsoft Azure Blob Storage where our backups reside, Our Azure Compute Account and then we can look at how we could automate end to end this process to bring your machines up in Microsoft Azure when you need them or before you need them.

here is the complete script

# Connect to Azure with a browser sign in token

Connect-AzAccount



# Set the Marketplace image

$locName="EASTUS"

$pubName="veeam"

$offerName="veeam-backup-replication"

$skuName="veeam-backup-replication-v10"

$version = "10.0.1"



# Variables for common values

$resourceGroup = "CadeTestingVBR"

$vmName = "CadeVBR"

$vmSize = "Standard_F4s_v2"

$StorageSku = "Premium_LRS"

$StorageName = "cadestorage"



Get-AzVMImage -Location $locName -PublisherName $pubName -Offer $offerName -Skus $skuName -Version $version



$agreementTerms=Get-AzMarketplaceterms -Publisher "veeam" -Product "veeam-backup-replication" -Name "10.0.1"



Set-AzMarketplaceTerms -Publisher "veeam" -Product "veeam-backup-replication" -Name "10.0.1" -Terms $agreementTerms -Accept





# Create user object

$cred = Get-Credential -Message "Enter a username and password for the virtual machine."



# Create a resource group



New-AzResourceGroup -Name $resourceGroup -Location $locname -force



# Create a subnet configuration

$subnetConfig = New-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name "cadesubvbr" -AddressPrefix 10.0.0.0/24



# Create a virtual network

$vnet = New-AzVirtualNetwork -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Location $locName `

  -Name CadeVBRNet -AddressPrefix 10.0.0.0/24 -Subnet $subnetConfig



# Create a public IP address and specify a DNS name

$pip = New-AzPublicIpAddress -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Location $locName `

  -Name "CadeVBR$(Get-Random)" -AllocationMethod Static -IdleTimeoutInMinutes 4



# Create an inbound network security group rule for port 3389

$nsgRuleRDP = New-AzNetworkSecurityRuleConfig -Name CadeVBRSecurityGroupRuleRDP  -Protocol Tcp `

  -Direction Inbound -Priority 1000 -SourceAddressPrefix * -SourcePortRange * -DestinationAddressPrefix * `

  -DestinationPortRange 3389 -Access Allow



# Create a network security group

$nsg = New-AzNetworkSecurityGroup -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Location $locName `

  -Name CadeVBRNetSecurityGroup -SecurityRules $nsgRuleRDP



# Create a virtual network card and associate with public IP address and NSG

$nic = New-AzNetworkInterface -Name CadeVBRNIC -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Location $locName `

  -SubnetId $vnet.Subnets[0].Id -PublicIpAddressId $pip.Id -NetworkSecurityGroupId $nsg.Id



# Create a virtual machine configuration

#vmConfig = New-AzVMConfig -VMName $vmName -VMSize $vmSize | `

#Set-AzVMOperatingSystem -Windows -ComputerName $vmName -Credential $cred | `

#Set-AzVMSourceImage -VM $vmConfig -PublisherName $pubName -Offer $offerName -Skus $skuName -Version $version | `

#Add-AzVMNetworkInterface -Id $nic.Id



#Create a virtual machine configuration



$vmConfig = New-AzVMConfig -VMName "$vmName" -VMSize $vmSize 

$vmConfig = Set-AzVMPlan -VM $vmConfig -Publisher $pubName -Product $offerName -Name $skuName

$vmConfig = Set-AzVMOperatingSystem -Windows -VM $vmConfig -ComputerName $vmName -Credential $cred

$vmConfig = Set-AzVMSourceImage -VM $vmConfig -PublisherName $pubName -Offer $offerName -Skus $skuName -Version $version

$vmConfig = Add-AzVMNetworkInterface -Id $nic.Id -VM $vmConfig



# Create a virtual machine

New-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Location $locName -VM $vmConfig



# Start Script installation of Azure PowerShell requirement for adding Azure Compute Account

Set-AzVMCustomScriptExtension -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup `

    -VMName $vmName `

    -Location $locName `

    -FileUri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MichaelCade/veeamdr/master/AzurePowerShellInstaller.ps1 `

    -Run 'AzurePowerShellInstaller.ps1' `

    -Name DemoScriptExtension



Start-Sleep -s 15



Write-host "Your public IP address is $($pip.IpAddress)"

mstsc /v:$($pip.IpAddress)

You can also find this version and updated versions of this script here in my GitHub repository.

Any comments feedback either down below here, twitter or on GitHub.

The image below shows pre Veeam Backup & Replication v10 when you go to configure your application aware processing.

Configuration

Now in Veeam Backup & Replication v10 and specifically those orchestrated snapshots only jobs we can be more granular on what we protect as per below.

This option enables you to take a periodic log backup to a Veeam Backup repository, whilst using the storage snapshot as the baseline. This is only applicable to orchestrated storage snapshots (this capability is already there for image based backups) to achieve this in your storage snapshot only job you will walk through the wizard until you get to the guest processing option page and then confirm that you require application-aware processing and then you can select Applications.

Next and this will depend on how many machines you have in your job and the placement of those VMs will depend on if you are wanting to achieve the VMware Snapshot-less approach to getting an application aware and consistent storage snapshot. Select your VM and edit to make the relevant application log file decisions.

For this VM which is a machine with SQL present I can now set the appropriate configuration that I need here.

Oracle would be the same here on the next tab over.

When this job is now scheduled to run if you have adhered to the configuration in the previous blog post around VM, datastore placement and backup job configuration then you can now achieve an application aware storage snapshot, without the requirement of a VMware snapshot whilst also being able to create a periodic log backup and use the storage snapshot as the baseline for any restore functionality.

Recovery

From a recovery point of view obviously this means we can have a much better RPO for our database recoveries, we have the speed from the storage snapshot baseline and we have the transaction log backups stored on a Veeam repository as a .VLB file or files.

A common question I have been asked about this feature is will this work with secondary snapshots, for example with NetApp ONTAP, HPE Nimble and HPE 3PAR we have the capability of being able to leverage their storage replication to create and send their snapshots to secondary systems. This feature will work in those scenarios also.

Another thing to note here is that with HPE Nimble those VM Disks for snapshot-less processing must reside on the same volume collection.

Ok, so how do we recover this data using our Veeam Explorers for SQL or Oracle.

Firstly, you should select the ribbon at the top and choose Restore, choose Restore from backup as our option.

Next, we want to choose the Application items restore option.

You will then see the list of Veeam Explorer options that we have, for this example we will choose SQL but this is also applicable to Oracle recovery options.

At this point we are then faced with the Veeam Explorer for SQL and you should choose the machine that is relevant for your restore operation, specifically here you will see a list of backup jobs and storage snapshots. We will choose our storage snapshot and our SQL server.

You will then be faced with the available restore points, or you can choose the latest available snapshot with the option at the top of the wizard.

Then choose a location for a temporary VM will be registered but remained powered off, this will be automatically removed after the restore operation is closed.

To finish the wizard, give a reason for the restore for audit purposes and then select finish on the summary screen this will then open the Veeam Explorer for SQL with the mounted databases from the restore point you chose.

Up until this point this is not different you could always do this before but you would have created the snapshot whilst also taking a VMware snapshot and you only have point in time copies of your databases on your storage snapshot. What this new feature in Veeam Backup & Replication v10 enables is the ability to restore to a specific point in time using those transaction log backups that we put on our Veeam repository as the .VLB files on a schedule.

Getting down to the specific transaction can also be achieved by selecting the “perform restore to the specific transaction” at the bottom of the wizard above. You then have the ability to fine tune which transaction you wish to restore back to, this is a lab environment so not much happening, but I created a transaction to show you an example.

The transaction log backup job runs permanently in the background, shipping transaction logs to the backup repository at a specific time interval (by default, every 15 minutes). This process was once only available for backup jobs but now you can achieve this with your storage snapshots also.

The transaction log snapshot /backup session starts and stops in the following way:

• The initial session starts when the parent backup job schedule is enabled. After that, the session starts with every new session of the parent backup job.
• The session ends before the next session of the parent backup job, and/or when this parent backup job is disabled.
• When the session ends, Veeam Backup & Replication stops the runtime process and uninstalls it from the VM guest OS. When a new session starts, the runtime process is deployed again.

Hope that was useful any questions let me know here below or get in touch on twitter @MichaelCade1

This was a nice feature that was sneaked into V10 without many people realising.

A common challenge with High IO workloads with VMware snapshots is that it would or could kill performance of likely this mission critical system when a VMware snapshot takes place, which either means you take that risk and manage to get a backup to happen during a relevant window, you leverage crash consistent storage snapshots which also do not require a VMware snapshot or GASP! You just do not do anything and hope that nothing happens to this MISSION CRITICAL system.

Ok so what can we do? – The theory

What if I told you, you could take an application aware and consistent storage snapshot without having to take a VMware snapshot?

If you are running one of the many storage integrations that are supported by Veeam then you are in luck. You can configure a Storage Snapshot only job with your application aware processing configured within the wizard and that is it. Ok there are some caveats. The VM’s virtual disks must be located on the same datastores and they must be unique within the backup job.

Here are some examples:

If you have one Veeam orchestrated snapshot job configured and you have 3 VMs from the same VM Datastore then the traditional method of creating a backup will take place which will involve a VMware snapshot.

Example 1

If you have one VM on a datastore that has high IO and you do not wish this to be affected with VMware snapshots then create one backup job that contains only this VM and you will achieve this application consistent storage snapshot.

Example 2

Finally lets take a Tier 1 application that is made up of 2 virtual machines, these machines reside on their own VM datastores and storage volumes, they are also both added to the same backup job this will also achieve that application consistent storage snapshot.

Example 3

Things to remember

• VM must be the only VM in storage volume / datastore within the backup job.
• If the VM is not the only VM in the storage volume / datastore and backup job, then VMware Snapshot will still take place.
• All VMs that do not qualify will be processed in parallel.
• All VMs that do qualify they will be processed sequentially.

Walkthrough

I am going to pick 3 virtual machines for this test

To match these jobs with the examples above:

• Snapshot-less Orchestrated Snapshot – Same – Example 1 (2 VMs on the same datastore and same storage volume)
• Snapshot-less Orchestrated Snapshot – Single – Example 2 (Single VM on its own unique datastore)
• Snapshot-less Orchestrated Snapshot – Multi – Example 3 (2 VMs on their own unique datastores within the job)

The key to note here is that the datastores mentioned above all contain other VMs in the environment but they are not included in the backup job.

Ok let us walk through creating the orchestrated snapshot job to make this happen. Ok so this is pretty simple but it is important to know where VMs are being stored to take advantage of this functionality, if that VM moves then it will revert back to a VMware snapshot unless it is a VM in it’s own Backup Job. First of all as with all Veeam jobs, give it a relevant name.

Click add and choose your virtual machines, this can be straight via the VM name and remember there is a search function there that will help with choosing out granular machines. You can also use vSphere tags but remember where the VMs are placed in order to use that option.

Next up, because we are running orchestrated snapshots for this role, at this point you will have already had to install or add your storage system within Veeam Backup & Replication, this way depending on the storage system you are using you can select the option for Primary Storage Snapshot Only for your specific storage integration.

The next screen is for application aware processing, this is the whole reason for the enhancement, we could already do crash consistent snapshot orchestration prior to v10 and this does not have the same limitations. For crash consistent you can have multiple VMs residing on the same storage volume. Add in your credentials and hit the test here to confirm all is good.

Most likely you are going to want to schedule this to happen to sort your RPO requirements.

Summary, this is what the job looks like, you can either save this and exit or you can say start the job now.

The Results

Now its worth pointing out that the systems I have chosen for this demo are lab machines, if you didn’t guess they are an Active Directory Domain Controller, Veeam ONE server running SQL Express and Veeam Backup & Replication also running SQL Express. (not the Veeam Backup & Replication server running the jobs) none of these systems are actually running high IO workloads this is to prove the concept so please ignore the durations.

This first one is in line with example 1, we have two VMs stored on the same datastore and storage volume and clearly both within the same backup job, you can see I have highlighted that in this instance we are going to take a VMware snapshot.

The second example is of a single VM in its own backup job. You can see that there is no “creating VM snapshot” or “Removing VM snapshot” you only see “Primary storage snapshot created successfully”

Finally, we have example 3, this shows 2 VMs in one backup job but both VMs are stored on two different storage volumes / datastores. Much the same as example 2 above now you can see that no VMware snapshot is taking place just the storage snapshot.

And just to confirm that we are application consistent here we have the logs being truncated in the summary below. There were some also enhancement in this area when it comes to SQL and Oracle that I will have to get to in another post.

So, you could do this kind of prior to Veeam Backup & Replication v10 but they would be crash consistent and that’s a huge risk to take on such important systems. Veeam also has this capability already with the storage integration with Cisco HyperFlex as this uses the native VM snapshot engine and API available on the HyperFlex system to achieve this.

And what if I told you, this has been around for years with Veeam Backup & Replication. Veeam have had this capability for a while now since 2016 in fact.

Primary use cases that we have seen have been,

Test and development

When you have the public cloud at your fingertips why not take advantage of it? Instead of having to purchase specific test and development environments. Also, perfect idea if you are looking to just see how certain apps and workloads are going to run in Microsoft Azure.

Data Migration

Let’s say you know where you are going and that is Microsoft Azure, how are you going to get those workloads there in a fast and efficient manner, Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure enables a fast way to restore those backups to the public cloud without compromising on keeping the restore points and more to the point the rollback is back to those production systems you also still have on premises.

Data recovery

We tend to talk about the bad failure scenarios, or we think nothing will happen to us and not really touch on the in between. What if you lost half your production virtualisation servers due to an outage of some description? What would you do? This feature within Veeam Backup & Replication enables you to restore some of your workloads from backups into Microsoft Azure you can then use an existing VPN or some other connectivity to join the environments and continue working or you could use VeeamPN to achieve this.

Walkthrough

In this YouTube video I walk through how easy and simple it is to get those image-based backups restored into Microsoft Azure as native Azure VMs for some of those use cases mentioned above. This also ties into the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure that was released this week.

Where should I run the conversion process?

I ran some tests for this one to determine for my lab where and what would be the best practice when it comes to restoring workloads into Microsoft Azure. Veeam offers a lot of choice when it comes to restore and how to assist when environmental challenges are in the way. Things like link speed to the public cloud due to location or other reasons for that. Also since the release of this feature back in 2016 there have also been many other enhancements and features added to Veeam Backup & Replication including the new Veeam Cloud Tier which gives us the ability to store our backups in Object storage, well we can also recover from those as well. This video linked below goes into more detail around where and what considerations you should take when looking to restore workloads to the public cloud.

Cloud Tier

It is only right that we have spoken about protecting native Azure VMs using the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, we have spoken about getting your image based backups from either virtual or physical platforms that you have on premises or even in other public clouds to Microsoft Azure so I had to mention Cloud Tier or Capacity tier on how we can tier our backups or copy our backups into Microsoft Azure Blob Storage for either a long term retention or an offsite copy of your data.

Couple all these features together and we have a pretty dynamic and flexible way of being able to move data to from and within the public clouds.

If you have any questions or comments, feedback at all on the videos then please let me know either here in the comments, on the YouTube channel or on Twitter, a side note here is that I will be creating more video content over the next few weeks whilst we are stuck at home, I for one have been consuming a lot more of my news and education through YouTube and judging by the uptake in subscriptions I think you are too so let me know anything you want to see or for me to walk through.

What is Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure?

This new product focuses in on the Azure IaaS workloads you have running in the public cloud, much like the Veeam Backup for AWS edition that was released early this year, this product provides you the ability to protect those Azure VMs without having to install and agent on each one. It is a policy driven approach allowing for both snapshots and backups to be part of your data management plan when it comes to Microsoft Azure.

The product is a standalone solution that is deployable from the Microsoft Azure marketplace. A very easy to use wizard driven approach to configuration and management. Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure Free Edition and subsequent versions are available within the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

The FREE edition allows you to protect 10 Azure VMs using native snapshots and then tier those snapshots to an Azure Blob Storage repository.

Within the Azure Blob Storage Repository these backups are stored in the portable data format that sets Veeam apart from the other vendors in this space. This allows for the Veeam Backup & Replication External Repository feature to be leveraged and enables the ability to further additional data protection or allow for other tasks such as migrations or on premises data recovery.

As you would expect the offering also allows you to recover those Azure Virtual Machines not only back where they initially resided but also across accounts and even across regions. As well as being able to provide file level recovery for a more granular option.

Another cool feature is the ability to see a level of cloud cost, when you create your policies through the wizard driven approach you have the ability to start seeing some cost forecasting so you can make better decisions about your cloud cost consumption.

Policies, Workers & Protected Data

Those familiar with Veeam will notice a different approach to some of the key functions and naming, and maybe you can liken these new terms with those found in Veeam Backup & Replication they have some differences.

Those familiar with Veeam Backup & Replication will recognise Policies as something more commonly known as Backup Jobs, however even within Veeam Backup & Replication world we are seeing policies now entering the fold with the CDP policy coming in later releases.

Policies give you the ability to define several requirements when it comes to your cloud data management. But again, it is that same very easy to use wizard driven approach that all Veeam customers will be familiar with.

You can choose to protect everything in a region, or we can be granular on what to protect. An awesome feature here is that you can select either by Instance or by Tag. Tags really lend well to the fast-moving pace of Cloud Instances being spun up and spun down all the time. The ability to use tags means we can protect in a more dynamic fashion. We will demonstrate the ease of use and how dynamic these tags within Azure can be created and used for your data management needs.

I mentioned above about Snapshots and Backups and how they are used together in this product to provide the best of both worlds when it comes to fast recovery points but also an out of band copy of your data not linked to the original VM.

You may wish on some workloads to only provide Snapshots and some only backups, or both. Snapshot settings allows you to define when these will be taken and how many snapshots you intend to keep. Backup Settings is where we can define that Microsoft Azure Blob Storage repository in which we wish to store those backups to, this will also play the part of making that data visible if you wish to see that within Veeam Backup & Replication. You also have the same retention setting to define here.

The workers are configured during the configuration stage and setup of the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure. Those familiar with Veeam Backup & Replication could maybe liken these worker nodes to the Veeam Backup Proxy component within VBR.

The worker is a Linux based instance that is deployed and used when data needs to be transferred, the worker is used for both backup and recovery. When the policy is complete then the workers are shut down but remain in place for the next scheduled policy to take place.

Cost Estimations

A unique feature that is built into the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure free edition and will obviously include other versions is the ability to estimate cost when it comes to backups and storing the retention you have defined. This is something else we go into further detail within the video walk-through below.

As I have mentioned this post gives a very high-level overview of what you can find with the new product but if you would like to see more then I have created a walk-through below. Any comments please comment here, on the YouTube video or find me on twitter.

Let me know what you think to the YouTube walk-through’s it is something I am intending to really increase given that we are house bound and I have more time to create this content.