Backup Exec: One Solution for All Your Virtual Machine Protection Needs

[AmitNazare]

Veritas Backup Exec is a backup solution that provides a simple experience with optimized backup performance and instant VM availability. With easy deployment in a single unified console to manage your entire data ecosystem and its wide range of features, Veritas Backup Exec is the best backup and recovery solution in the SMB segment.

With every release, Backup Exec offers you more enhanced features with the ‘Day 1’ support for new versions of the VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V platforms. Backup Exec’s Agent for VMware and Hyper-V allows users to protect virtual machines hosted on VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V server, respectively. Backup Exec provides various options and features for virtual machine protection, making the job easy for backup administrators. Some important features that Backup Exec offers are listed below.

Accelerator (Forever Incremental Backups)

Backup Exec supports Forever Incremental Backups, also known as Backup Exec Accelerator. It eliminates the need to constantly take full backups from the source every week by consolidating the previous full and incremental backups. A consolidated full backup is equivalent to a full backup from the source virtual machine. Consolidation operation is run using the Deduplication Block Cloning technology, which runs backup operation up to 100x faster. Consolidate full backup set can be used for all types of restores, such as virtual machine restores, GRT restore, application GRT restore, Instant Recovery, and Recovery Ready. 

Instant Recovery, Instant Cloud Recovery, and Recovery Ready

Backup Exec offers Instant Recovery of on-premise virtual workloads with near-zero RTO. Backup Exec lets the user recover a virtual machine instantly without waiting to transfer the virtual machine's data from a backup set, and users can access it immediately. It can instantly recover any virtual machine irrespective of the guest operating system.

Backup Exec’s Instant Cloud Recovery feature integrates with Azure Site Recovery and enables users to recover their virtual machines directly from the cloud with a near-zero RPO and RTO.

Backup Exec’s Recovery Ready feature allows users to validate virtual machine backups to ensure they are ready for recovery.

Instant GRT

Cataloging the backup set usually takes time, and it keeps the source occupied. Backup Exec’s Instant GRT option skips the cataloging part of the backup and generates the cataloging data dynamically before the restore.

Backup as per Need (Dynamic Inclusion & Partial Selection)

Backup Exec's dynamic inclusion feature automatically protects new virtual machines and folders found when a backup job runs. It also automatically protects the virtual disks that are newly added to a virtual machine.

Users can also select the VM partially by including or excluding individual disks of a virtual machine. This help user to save backup time and storage cost by selecting only important virtual disks for backup. Additionally, it also skips the backup of page files inside virtual machines that contain transient data.

Restore as per Need (Backup Exec Granular Recovery Technology)

Backup Exec's Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) lets you restore individual drives, files, and folders from backup sets without restoring the entire virtual machine. It also lets the user restore individual items from the VSS-aware applications that reside on virtual machines, E.g., Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, SQL, etc.

Backup Exec also provides the option to restore complete or partial virtual machines in case of disaster recovery. Virtual machines can be restored to the original location or new location.

Hyper-Converged Environment Support

Backup Exec supports backup of virtual machines on Azure Stack Hyper-converged infrastructures, extended support for Nutanix with VMware vSphere and Hyper-V.

Backup Exec also protects virtual machines hosted on VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, and Azure VMware Solutions. Overall, Backup Exec is the best solution for all your virtual environment protection needs - be it in on-prem or remote office branch office (ROBO) use case with various cloud platforms.