Rick Byrne: Veeam Backup & Replication Cloud Edition Review

In the last few nights I had some free time, and I decided to diversify my everyday life by studying in my laboratory a new product from Veeam. Veeam Backup Cloud Edition is a product that allows you to move local backups out of the office, to any of the 15 popular cloud storages, or to arbitrary cloud storage that supports OpenStack, or even to any file servers located inside or outside the office. . What does this give from a practical point of view? - An economically optimal solution for office-free storage of backup copies of virtual environments based on VMware or Hyper-V, and, at the same time, not requiring revision of the existing processes of local internal office backup.

Introduction

So, the main features:

• Cloud vendor independence - supports 15 of the most popular cloud storage, as well as clouds with support for OpenStack;
• Cryptographic protection - encryption of the backup sent to the cloud up to AES-256;
• Data Compression - Saves both time and money! Compress backups before transferring them to the cloud.
• Estimation of the cost of storing data - you can set a threshold of costs in gigabytes or dollars, which will allow to fit into the budget;
• Event notifications - email notifications about the status of data copying tasks to the cloud;
• Channel load planning - control over the load on the Internet channel both in real time and through the schedule;

( More information about the features of Veeam Backup Could Edition can be read in this post , - Approx. Translator )

Licensing
All components of Veeam Backup & Replication Cloud Edition use one license file. For the product to work, it is necessary that the license file contains a “Cloud” section. If you already have a regular version of Veeam Backup, and you try to use the Cloud version with an existing license file (where there is no Cloud section), you will receive an error message:

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Installation

Installing the product is quick and painless. During the installation of Cloud Edition, you need to remember that all components must be installed locally on the same machine where the B & R SQL database is installed. This is required for the correct operation of the integration components, thanks to which you can see the execution history of the Cloud tasks and the Cloud tasks themselves directly from the Veeam B & R user interface.

Do not forget to check before installing :
- System requirements;
- Availability of a Cloud license;
- As described above, it is highly desirable to install the product and the SQL database on the same machine;

Product installation process
Consider the case when there is already an installed regular version of Veeam B & R, and then only the installation process of Cloud Edition will be shown.


Next you need to select the mode of use of the product. In short, in one case all users will have the same product settings and general backup plans, and in the other - personal ones. I choose the first option.


Next comes the selection of the target installation directory.


We observe a short installation process.


3 minutes from the launch of the installation - and everything is ready!


First start…


On the “Welcome” tab there is a button for creating a backup plan, from which it is reasonable to start working. The remaining tabs practically do not contain any information until at least one backup plan is created.


In the “File” menu you can see a list of all cloud storage providers. I do not think that someone will be displeased with the breadth of choice. If by this time you still do not have an account with any of the providers, then you can start shopping now! You can even choose Amazon Glacier, and start using it as a very inexpensive storage option for data archiving.


In the screenshot below you can see the export and import configuration windows. These product features allow you to export a configuration on one server, and then import and apply it on another.


In the “Tools” menu, you can select the “Change Service Account” item, which allows you to start the Cloud Console under a different account, if it is necessary for correct authentication during backup and recovery operations. It is possible to use different authentication information for different network paths.


Now consider the product settings. Here you can set preferences, the number of attempts to establish connections, set the load on the channel on a schedule, the Global Purging settings, the proxy settings, the settings for recording events to the log file, and other product options.

Create backup plan

I do not have accounts in cloud storages. Therefore, for further testing, I am going to use “Shared Folders”, the mode of using network folders that do not belong to the domain of my laboratory.

The first thing I do is specify the authentication parameters for the network connection:



It is time to start the backup plan creation wizard:


The next step is to select a storage. In my case, I select the “file system” and create a new account. In the “Advanced” settings, you can select “Backup Prefix”, which allows you to easily distinguish between data from different tasks configured to copy data to the same folder.


"Backup Mode" - Backup Mode

There are two main options:

• “Advanced Mode” - you can use encryption and save versions of files. However, it will only be possible to access your files through the Veeam Cloud Edition Manager.
• “Simple Mode” - you can use any file managers to access your files, but without support for encryption and saving file versions.

I leave the choice to your discretion, but personally I liked “Advanced mode”, where I can use encryption to protect my data, and also I can save versions of my files. "Custom Mode", in fact, makes a "banal" replication. The option “Force using VSS” may be of interest to you when you need to forcefully use VSS, which is extremely necessary when running applications “keep” the files included in the backup tasks open.


Now it’s time to choose a data source. I choose the folder "Critical_VMs".


"Advanced Filter" allows you to choose what specifically you want or do not want to replicate to the cloud. It is possible to skip some folders or select files that were modified at a specific time.


Now I turn to the “Compress and Encryption” step. Here you can choose compression and data encryption settings. I'm going to choose the option of “compressing all files”, as well as encryption using AES 128 Bit *** Please remember the encryption key you need in the future if you want to restore something from the cloud. *** Additionally, you can also choose the option to encrypt file names.


Next come the settings for the storage cleanup policy, which can be global or specific for a specific backup job.


The task schedule window does not provide very many settings. You can choose to run tasks manually, run at a specified time, run periodically, and copy changes in real time. In the latter version, regular, once a minute, monitoring of all changes in specified folders with copying of all changes to the local storage will be carried out. Then every 10 minutes, these changed data will be copied from local storage to the cloud.


The Pre / Post Commands window allows you to specify and configure the launch of programs before and after completing the task. Depending on the result of these programs, the task as a whole can either continue or be interrupted, ending with an error.


Notifications can be made by sending messages to the administrator's Email and generating events in the Windows log.


At the final step, you can see a summary of the task and make sure that everything looks as planned.


Now that the backup plan has been created, the welcome window is changing: it begins to show information about existing vaults and backup plans. The “Backup Plan” tab is a place where you can start a task, view its progress, or make changes to its settings.


The “Backup Storage” tab allows you to view the storage, allows you to recover files from it, as well as delete files from the storage.

Run backup plan

Now that I have a customized backup plan, I just want to create a full backup of two virtual machines.


In fact, this does not create a very large amount of data for transmission to the cloud: about 14.3 GB. To start a backup plan, you need to start the Cloud console, go to the “Backup Plans” tab and click on the “Run” link.


Backup is complete.


Email Alert:


On the “Backup Storage” tab you can see your files:


And now we will look in the network folder. In D $ files are in encrypted form. CBB_Configuration is where the backup plan configuration is saved.

Manage backup plan from command line

You can ask this question: is it possible to start the backup task in Veeam Backup & Replication and then automatically start Cloud Backup to transfer data to the off-site storage ... It is quite possible! Veeam Cloud Backup includes the cbb.exe utility, which is located in the Veeam Cloud installation directory (the default is “C: \ program files \ Veeam \ Cloud Backup \ cbb.exe”). To find out how to work with it, just run it with no arguments or with the key "?". In addition, the Veeam Cloud Backup Help has a separate chapter on CLI.


All you need to do is create a “trigger” that will launch Cloud Backup directly after completing Veeam Backup. To get a list of backup plans, run “cbb.exe plan –l”. The plan I need is called “VM Different-Storage”.


The command I need will have the following syntax:


Now that the command has been verified, it can be issued as a command (*. Bat / *. Cmd) file. I'm going to edit my backup task in Veeam Backup. This can be done through the “post-command” in “Storage settings” => “Advanced Options”. I save the changes:


Now I run the task with the new post-command again.


After the task is completed, the post command is immediately launched, which starts the backup to the cloud.

Time to recover data

It's time to check how data recovery works, since there is no point in replicating data to the cloud, if I can't, if necessary, restore it from there.

So the first thing I do is delete two files.



And now I will try to restore them. I open the Cloud Backup console, and then the “Backup Storage” tab. I open the folder where the files should be.


Here you can see two files that I deleted. I selected them and, by pressing the right key, I am going to restore them to their original location.


I choose the option of a single action:


Restoring the latest version. This is the very place where the benefits of version control of files open, which is available if you have previously selected the Advanced mode.


Restore files to their original location.


Since the files were encrypted, you need to specify a password.


Make sure everything is in order.


Watching progress:


Recovery takes only 30 seconds, but I remind you that I use local storage and do not use traffic compression.


On the History tab you can make sure that two files were restored:


My files have been successfully restored to their original location:

"Dry residue"

I don’t know if anyone noticed anything particularly surprising in Cloud Backup, but in fact I got the following result: I just picked up and checked that I could replicate arbitrary files to the cloud. At the same time I did not prepare in any special way a test lab - I just ran the product on two randomly selected files, and everything went without any problems. Veeam could embed in Cloud Edition a restriction on the use of backup products or replication from other manufacturers, but there is no such restriction. For this, I want to say special thanks to Veeam, as it makes my business easier, because it greatly increases the flexibility in applying products to a specific customer. And, summing up, I want to say that (personally for me) the product is worth its money as a component of the overall security system and protection of enterprise data.

PS For more information about the product Veeam Backup & Replication Cloud Edition, you can read on the website Veeam Software ( Approx. Translator ).