Veeam Widens Its Data Protection Reach

Key Features to Keep in Mind When Evaluating Backup and Restore Solutions

Once upon a time, it was enough to be able to just back up a file and then eventually recover it. But with businesses now more dependent on IT than ever, any time there is an issue, users need to be able to recover from that problem immediately.

With that in mind, Veeam Software has announced the Veeam Availability Suite, an offering that combines agentless backup and recovery software with replication capabilities, which allows IT organizations to immediately recover critical data.

Veeam Software CEO Ratmir Timashev says that while some organizations may view replication as way to eliminate the need for traditional backup and recovery software, when it comes to data protection, many other nuances must be considered. For example, if a file is infected by a virus, the organization is going to want to recover a previous version as opposed to the version that was just replicated.

Thanks to snapshot software that is now generally available from all the primary storage vendors, Timashev says that it is, however, more feasible and less costly to also replicate data in a way that provides instant access to that data should a catastrophic event occur. That snapshot capability is key, adds Timashev, because it takes the whole issue of finding backup windows off the table once those snapshots are replicated to another data center.

Scheduled to be available later this year, Timashev says the Veeam Availability Suite is intended to provide a variety of data protection options at a cost the average IT organization can afford while using their own data centers or the services of a cloud storage provider.

The only challenge now is figuring exactly the level of data protection to apply to data based on the value that data actually provides the business.