Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition not only allows you to protect 10 VMs at the Veeam Backup & Replication Standard edition level, but also provides UNLIMITED FREE on-demand backup and migration for any additional VMs. The solution is agent-free, enables efficient data recovery, and features VeeamZIP™ technology for the flexibility and reliability of FREE Reserve copy VM for daily work.

VeeamZIP: On-the-fly backup

Create VeeamZIP backups for VMware and Hyper-V VMs with Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition! VeeamZIP packages VMs into a compact, portable backup file. The backup copy includes virtual disks and VM configuration files, so this VM can be restored on any ESXi or Hyper-V host. VeeamZIP also supports thin disks. Benefits of VeeamZIP:

• Simplicity. Easy setup and the ability to work with VMs without turning them off or pausing them.
• Compactness. Backup sizes are kept to a minimum through data compression and deduplication, block exclusion, page files, hibernation and deleted files.
• Portability. VeeamZIP backups can be stored in shared folder, on a local disk or external device, for example, a portable hard drive or USB drive.

Recovering computers and guest OS files

Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition offers a full range of recovery capabilities, including full recovery and granular recovery of application objects. Moreover, you can look inside the backup and restore necessary files guest OS. The ability to instantly recover files is offered for 19 file systems that are used in the OS Microsoft Windows, Linux, Unix, BSD, Mac, Solaris and Novell - for host-level and agent-based backups.

Native tape support

With the end of support for the NTBackup utility and its exclusion from Windows Server Backup (WSB) set of IT tools has lost an important component. Veeam's free solution brings back this functionality with support for file backup to virtual tape libraries, tape libraries, and standalone tape drives, including Microsoft VSS support for backing up running application files, parallel processing, and more!

• Translation
• Tutorial

It’s been a while since we wrote about our flagship product. We are correcting ourselves, especially since another portion has arrived useful tips from the guys from Veeam Support Team. Today my colleague Evgeniy Ivanov is with you again, now from Bucharest, where he was called as a mentor for the Romanian technical support team.

In the course of their work, Evgeniy and his comrades have collected a decent collection of “rake” that novice users most often stumble upon when deploying and configuring Veeam Backup & Replication. And so that you don’t repeat their mistakes, Zhenya explains how to do everything right.
So, welcome to cat.

#1: Choose the best backup method

"Straight incremental" or "infinitely incremental" are usually recommended as they are the fastest. An infinitely incremental chain (without periodic full backups) takes up less space and is processed quite quickly. A conventional incremental chain takes up more space, but it is also more “viable,” so to speak, since it contains not only incremental backups, but also periodically created full ones.

The reverse (reverse) incremental method is the oldest and, naturally, the slowest. Depending on the storage system, it can be 3 or even more times slower than others. However, its use also has its advantages: the last one in the chain is always a full backup, and therefore you can recover faster than from other types of chains. Note, however, that the difference from a regular incremental chain is not very significant (unless you keep such a chain unreasonably long, that is, more than 30 days).

The methods are described in more detail.

#2: Consider setting up synthetic full backups

The synthetic full backup operation uses recovery points that are stored in the repository. But you need to keep in mind that not every storage system is able to provide sufficient performance for this operation. Therefore, we recommend creating active full backups as an alternative.

When you set the settings for creating a synthetic full backup, pay attention to the “Transform previous backup chains into rollbacks” option. Its use will result in the task of converting an incremental backup (.VIB) to rollback points (.VRB) being launched (which will, however, consume a significant part of the repository storage resources). For example, with this option you can convert the current chain into a reverse-incremental one, in particular for archival storage.

But if you use this option as a backup method, you will end up creating a very unique chain of a full backup file and incremental and reverse-incremental backup files.

#3: Set up guest OS processing

Guest OS processing allows you to create consistent backups of virtual machines. And if the VM runs applications such as Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, SharePoint, SQL Server or Oracle, then you can use the capabilities of Veeam Explorers tools for their granular recovery. Working with the guest OS is based on VSS functionality (supported by Windows), which must be configured correctly, otherwise backup jobs will not be able to complete successfully.

To activate guest OS processing settings:

#4: Don't index files unnecessarily

If you activate the option VM Guest File System Indexing(indexing guest OS files) in the backup settings, Veeam Backup & Replication will create directories of VM files. This will allow you to perform file search and 1-click recovery through the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager web interface.

If you do not work with Enterprise Manager, then we recommend not enabling this option - this way you will shorten the backup window (sometimes quite significantly) and save disk space C: Veeam backup server. This will not affect the recovery of VM files through the Veeam Backup & Replication console.

#5: Make additional backups

No storage system manufacturer guarantees absolute data integrity. Of course, Veeam checks the backup file when writing to disk, but with millions of operations performed on the storage system, accidental bit reversal is still possible, resulting in “invisible” corruption. To identify such damage at an early stage, Veeam Backup & Replication offers SureBackup and health checks. But this is not a panacea, so we advise you to adopt the 3-2-1 rule, which prescribes using for backup different types media and store them on at least 2 sites.

To do this, it is recommended that after creating the main backup task, you configure the backup transfer task. Such a job can use backup storage as the target storage location or cloud storage. You can also archive backups to magnetic tape.

#6: Finalize Instant Recovery

The Instant VM Recovery function allows you to start the machine in the shortest possible time directly from a backup. However, you need to remember that this machine is hosted in your repository and consumes its resources until you move it to production. Don’t forget about this important final step - believe me, over the years of working in Veeam technical support, we have seen many cases of VMs that functioned in “backup” mode for weeks without being transferred to production. The result was usually quite disastrous: storage system overflow and data loss.

Read in detail about how to properly perform instant recovery.

#7: Consider where to host the repository

Veeam supports a wide variety of storages as repositories. Many of our users, year after year, prefer to use physical Windows server or Linux, since in most cases this gives maximum performance. You can read about this on our forum.

CIFS share repositories are also quite popular, despite the fact that their performance is the lowest compared to others.

Many modern devices NAS support iSCSI, so it is better to configure the iSCSI disk and make it available to the Veeam backup server (or proxy). It should be kept in mind that in such a scenario (using a repository on a NAS), it is not recommended to use the reverse-incremental backup method, because it puts a large load on the storage system due to the read/write intensity.

#8: Use a proxy for replication

If you are going to perform replication over the WAN, we recommend that you set up a backup proxy server on a remote site and specify it in the replication job settings. This way you will get a reliable channel between the two sites. We recommend enabling this proxy to work in the mode Network(NBD), since operation in Virtual Appliance(hot-add) during replication can lead to “lost” snapshots.

#9: Consider important nuances when archiving to tape

Veeam uses a secondary server (tape server) to transfer data to the tape device. It is installed on the physical server to which this tape device is connected.

Important! Connecting to a VM with “forwarding” through an ESXi host is not supported!

Veeam Backup & Replication receives tape library information from the operating system, so be sure you have the latest drivers installed and that the tape device appears correctly in the device manager.

You can read more useful tips about working with magnetic tape

Implementation of virtualization technologies in Lately is becoming common practice for companies of all sizes. However, it requires a review of security issues. And one of the key issues when creating a virtual environment protection system is ensuring the integrity and availability of the processed information.

To protect against information loss, data backup and recovery systems are used. As a rule, this is a software or hardware-software complex for creating copies of data at certain intervals for their subsequent recovery. The use of backup tools in virtual infrastructures allows you to protect data from loss or corruption in the event of equipment failure, software failures, or human errors (users and infrastructure administrators).

The need to use backup and data recovery tools for virtual environments is also reflected in the regulatory documents of the FSTEC of Russia - the requirements for backup of virtualization tools are described by measure ZSV.8 in Orders No. 17, 21 and 31. In addition, in order to comply with the requirements of the FSTEC of Russia, companies should focus on the use of certified information security tools.

In this review, we will take a closer look at the updated version of the Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 data backup and recovery system for virtual infrastructures from VeeamSoftware. Previously, we published the eighth version of the Veeam Backup & Replication product, more than a year has passed since then, and during this time it has changed significantly. In this article we will focus on features and improvements updated version Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5.

New features and improvements in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Compared to the previous version under review (8.0), the product includes a number of important changes and improvements.

User interface

Optimization of the UI component made it possible to reduce the load on the configuration database and UI response time. In addition, a Color Scheme item has been added to the program settings menu to switch between different color schemes.

Assigning preferred proxy servers allows you to specify in the repository settings which proxy servers you prefer to use to work with it. If none of the preferred servers is available, then the proxy will be selected according to the task settings.

Improved performance of Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

One of the improvements new version is to improve the performance of Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5. Optimization of the configuration base reduced the load on the SQL server due to faster query processing. Accelerated processing of backup metadata allows faster processing of jobs with virtual machines running many server applications, including: server applications, when backing up, you need to store a large amount of metadata.

Increase backup speed

Improved data transfer module. The backup process has been accelerated up to two times virtual disks when using high-end storage systems, and also reduces the load on production storage systems. This effect is achieved by reducing the number of read-write operations when executing a backup job. This functionality is supported for the VMware platform when backing up from hardware snapshots in Virtual Appliance (hot add) and Direct NFS modes.

Caching infrastructure dataVMware vSphere. IN random access memory vSphere infrastructure topology information is now stored and updated in real time when infrastructure change events are received from the vCenter server. Veeam Broker Service is responsible for collecting and storing infrastructure data. As a result, there are two advantages: the construction of a list of VMs is accelerated when starting a backup job and when displaying a representation of the virtual infrastructure in the UI, and part of the load is removed from vCenter Server.

Optimizing queries toVMware vSphere. The speed of query execution has become significantly higher, and now even if it is necessary to build the entire VMware topology (for example, when rebooting the Veeam Backup server or restarting the Veeam Broker Service), the load on vCenter Server is minimal.

Improved data recovery performance

Instant VM Recovery. Veeam allows you to recover not only virtual, but also physical servers or user computers V virtual machines. This will allow, for example, to quickly “raise” a failed physical machine from backup while repair work is being carried out.

Parallel processing of disks when restoring entire VMs. This option is enabled by default for all repositories stored on disk storage systems (except for Data Domain storage systems with built-in deduplication).

Expanded integration with ReFS in Windows Server 2016

File ReFS system 3.1 increases the performance and efficiency of processing large amounts of data, while also ensuring the safety of backup copies and protecting critical business applications thanks to fast cloning technology (increases the speed of creating and transforming synthetic full backups by up to 20 times), reducing disk space requirements and software. In addition, it helps ensure the integrity of the backup copy and cope with the problem of silent data corruption through monitoring and timely reporting of data corruption generated using ReFS integrity streams. ReFS also implements automatic correction of damaged data blocks during the recovery process or during regular scanning with ReFS cleanup tools through the use of a “mirror” of Storage Spaces and parity blocks.

TechnologyDirect Restore inMMicrosoft Azure

Direct Restore technology in Microsoft Azure allows you to restore data from any Veeam backup to the cloud, helping to optimize resource allocation, improve scalability and increase the efficiency of IT operations, as well as minimize operational costs and limit capital costs.

With automated P2V and V2V conversion processes, users can restore or migrate on-premises workloads to Azure.

Integration with technologies for Microsoft data centers 2016

Veeam integration with Microsoft 2016 data center technologies allows you to modernize your private cloud and enterprise applications with Windows support Server 2016, Hyper-V 2016, and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2016 (SCVMM).

You can reserve virtual machines for Windows control Server 2016 using file system indexing and virtual machine processing based on running applications. However, for virtual machines on the Hyper-V 2016 platform, such processing and indexing, as well as file-level recovery (FLR), can be performed through direct access to the guest operating system, without requiring mandatory network connection(network connectivity). Also supported file system ReFS and fast block cloning technology.

Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 supports Microsoft Active Directory 2016, Exchange 2016, SharePoint 2016 and SQL Server 2016.

Working with storage systems

The list of storage systems integrated with Veeam has been expanded. Now, in addition to storage systems, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp, Dell EMC, Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 supports Nimble and Cisco storage systems. Integration reduces the load on your production environment and improves recovery point and tolerable time (RTPO™) performance.

Backing up from hardware snapshots reduces the load on the primary storage system during backup. You can also quickly restore individual application objects, guest operating system files, or entire VMs from hardware snapshots on primary storage or from replicated copies on backup storage.

In addition, the new version of the system allows you to select a protocol for connecting storage systems - FC, iSCSI or NFS.

The new version includes support for NetApp Data ONTAP 9.0, as well as automatic load balancing among multiple LIFs (logical interfaces) when using large clusters.

New features Veeam Cloud Connect

Veeam Cloud Connect allows you to back up to virtually any service provider's cloud. The new version of the product has the ability to replicate VMs to the cloud, which allows you to quickly restore the functionality of infrastructure services.

In addition, it became possible to parallel data processing on the user side. Backup and replication of several VMs (or several disks of one machine) will occur in parallel, and the number of such tasks will be limited by the maximum value that is set on the provider’s side. Users will also be able to replicate from backups stored in a cloud repository. Support for a scalable repository on the provider side has also been added, which allows you to combine cloud repositories into a single scalable repository structure, which greatly simplifies management. The popular option for storing chains of backup copies grouped by VM is now available when working with a cloud repository; it is especially useful when using storage systems with built-in deduplication.

Server application support

Support has been implemented for Oracle servers on the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and 12 platform, and also supports Oracle servers running using Oracle Data Guard in backup mode.

Veeam Agent for Linux

The updated Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 certified package now includes Veeam Agent for Linux, designed to protect physical machines running Linux, deployed on premises or in the cloud.

Solution architecture

The certified version of Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 includes:

• software component Veeam Backup & Replication v9.5 Update 1;
• Veeam Agent software component for Linux v1.

The Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 infrastructure includes a set of components necessary to perform data protection and recovery tasks:

• Backup Server: A physical or virtual server on which Veeam Backup & Replication is installed. The backup server is the management component of the infrastructure.
• Virtualization hosts: ESX(i) or Hyper-V hosts used as source and destination for backup, replication, and other tasks.
• Proxy: A component that performs the tasks of reading data from the source host, storage or repository (in case of data recovery), processing the data and transferring it to the target device or host.
• Repositories: A location (directory) to store backups, virtual machine replica metadata, and other data.

Veeam Agent for Linux is a tool for backing up physical devices running Linux: computers, servers and machines in the public cloud. It creates image-level backups that are stored in VBK format, the same format used in Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows. Veeam Agent for Linux is a standalone component that can be used separately from Veeam Backup & Replication. In this case, Veeam Agent can use Veeam Backup & Replication repositories as the target storage.

System requirements and supported technologies

Minimum system requirements for core components

When deploying Veeam Backup & Replication, you must consider the following basic hardware and software requirements for its components:

Table 1. System requirements Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Component	Hardware	operating system	DBMS
Veeam Backup & Replication Server	Processor: x86-64. Memory: 4GB and 500MB for each running task. HDD: 2GB for installation and 10GB for every 100 virtual machines. Network: Ethernet 1Gbps		Microsoft SQL Server 2014, 2012 (Express edition included), 2008 R2, 2008 Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Veeam Backup & Replication Console	Processor x86-64. Memory: 2 GB Hard disk: 500 MB for product installation and 4.5 GB for Microsoft installation. NET Framework 4.5.2. Network: 1 Mbit/s	Microsoft Windows Server 2016, 2012 R2, 2012, 2008 R2 SP1, 2008 SP2 Microsoft Windows 10, 8.0, 8.1, 7 SP1
Proxy server	Processor: x86 processor (minimum 2 cores recommended). Memory: 2 GB and 200 MB for each running job. Hard disk: 300 MB. Network: Ethernet 1 Gbit/s.	For Hyper-V: Microsoft Windows Server 2016, 2012, 2012 R2, 2008 R2 SP1 with Hyper-V role installed ForVMware ESXi: Microsoft Windows Server 2016, 2012 R2, 2012, 2008 R2 SP1, 2008 SP2 Microsoft Windows 10, 8.0, 8.1, 7 SP1, Vista SP2	-
Repository	Processor: x86 processor (x86-64 recommended). Memory: 4 GB and 2 GB for each running job. Hard Drive: 200 MB of free disk space for installation. The size of disk space for storing backup copies is determined by the user. Network: Ethernet 1 Gbit/s.	32 and 64 bit versions Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (R2) 2008 (R2 SP1, SP2) 2003 (SP2) Microsoft Windows 8.x, 7 SP1, Vista SP2 Linux (required command shell bash, SSH and Perl).	-
Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager	Processor x86-64. Memory: 2 GB. Hard drive: 2 GB	Microsoft Windows Server 2016, 2012 R2, 2012, 2008 R2 SP1, 2008 SP2, 8.0, 8.1, 7 SP1	Microsoft SQL Server 2014, 2012 (2012 Express SP3 edition included in the distribution), 2008 R2, 2008

The complete requirements for hardware and software components are given in the manuals provided by the vendor.

Supported virtualization technologies

Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 supports the following virtualization technologies:

Table 2. Supported virtualization technologies

Component	VMware vSphere	Microsoft
Platforms	vSphere 6.0, 6.5 vSphere 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 vSphere 4.1	Hyper-V
Hosts	ESXi 6.0, 6.5 ESXi 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 ESX 4.1, ESXi 4.1	Windows Nano Server (with Hyper-V role installed) Windows Server Hyper-V 2016 Windows Server Hyper-V 2012 R2 Windows Server Hyper-V 2012 Windows Server Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 Microsoft Hyper-V Server supported ( free version hypervisor)
Infrastructure management software	vCenter Server 6.0, 6.5 (optional) vCenter Server 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 (optional) vCenter Server 4.1 (optional) vCloud Director 5.5, 5.6, 8.0, 8.10 (optional)	Microsoft PowerShell Engine 2.0 (optional, for handling guest OS without network connection) Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2016 (optional) Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 (optional) Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 (optional) Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 (optional)
Virtual machine	All types and versions of virtual hardware are supported, including VMDK disks up to 62 TB in size Any are supported OS supported by VMware vSphere	Supports 5.0 and 8.0 (Hyper-V 2016) versions of virtual hardware Generation 1 and 2 virtual machines are supported, including VHDX up to 64 TB in size. Any operating systems supported by Microsoft Hyper-V are supported.

Veeam Agent for Linux requirements:

Integration with storage systems

Hardware snapshot backup and Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots are supported for the following devices:

Dell EMC VNX, VNX2, VNXe and Unity

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

• 3PAR OS 3.1.2 and higher

HPE StoreVirtual (LeftHand/P4000 series) and StoreVirtual VSA

• Connection via iSCSI only
• LeftHand OS versions from 9.5 to 12.6
• HPE SV3200 (LeftHand OS version 13) not supported

NetApp FAS, FlexArray (V-Series), Edge VSA and IBM N Series (NetApp FAS OEM)

• Supports connection via NFS, Fiber Channel (FC) or iSCSI
• Data ONTAP versions from 8.1 to 9.0
• 7-mode or cluster modes

Nimble Storage AF-Series and CS-Series

• Supports connection via Fiber Channel (FC) or iSCSI
• Nimble OS version 2.3 and higher

A complete list of supported systems is provided by the vendor.

Licensing Policy

Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 is licensed per CPU socket on the VM hosts running backup, replication, monitoring, and reporting jobs. A license is required for each occupied socket on motherboard according to the hypervisor API.

Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 offers two types of licenses: perpetual license or subscription-based license.

Compliance with the requirements of FSTEC of Russia

Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 is certified according to the security requirements of FSTEC of Russia (certificate No. 3482). The received FSTEC certificate gives Veeam users the opportunity to organize business processes in accordance with the requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation. Certified version Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 can be used to backup personal data of individuals, confidential information of organizations, DSP information, trade secrets and other restricted information that is not related to state secrets, both in the public sector and in commercial organizations.

Working with the product

Working with Veeam Agent for Linux v1

You can install and update Veeam Agent for Linux using the installation packages available on the Veeam website.

Backup is configured using the control panel (similar to the user interface) or from the command line. The procedure for creating a backup includes several steps:

1. Selecting a backup mode: for bare metal recovery, at the volume level or at the file level.
2. Selecting a backup repository: local disk, shared folder, or Veeam Backup & Replication repository (9.5 Update 1 required).
3. Configure the schedule and number of recovery points.

Veeam Agent for Linux offers a control panel - a kind of GUI(GUI), which can be launched from the command line and used even if the program is installed on a server that does not have a window manager.

Figure 1. Setting up a backup job in Veeam Agent for Linux

Figure 2. Selecting a backup area: the entire machine, one of the volumes, or individual directories and files

Figure 3. Setting up a backup schedule

If additional backup settings are required, you can use the command line: this will allow you to create your own scripts to automate deployment and backup.

Figure 4. Command line backup in Veeam Agent for Linux

IN command line you can specify parameters such as compressionLevel And blockSize, which are not available in the UI. Here you can also set parameters for preparing the image for creating a snapshot and returning to standard mode work. This will allow, for example, to create a consistent backup of the database server.

After setting up the task, the creation of a backup copy is started.

Figure 5. Information about creating a backup in Veeam Agent for Linux

If the Veeam Backup & Replication server is used to store backups, then the available copies will be in the Agents tab.

To recover data at the file level, you must select the Recover Files command. The backup will be mounted as a separate directory, and you can use any file manager to view the files.

Figure 6. Data recovery in Veeam Agent for Linux

The Veeam Agent for Linux window displays the available backups and the number of recovery points in each backup. In this case, we have only one restore point.

Figure 7. Selecting a backup in Veeam Agent for Linux

To select and use it, press the Enter key twice. As a result, the backup file is mounted in the /mnt/backup directory.

Figure 8. Selecting a backup in Veeam Agent for Linux

Instant VM Recovery technology

Instant VM Recovery helps maintain system availability when the need arises. Instant VM Recovery technology allows you to immediately restore a failed virtual machine by starting it directly from a backup file.

In order to recover a VM using Instant VM Recovery, you need to start the virtual machine from a backup copy without forcing users to wait for space to be allocated on storage resources, removing the machine from the backup copy and moving it to the production environment.

Figure 9. Instant VM Recovery in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Instant recovery of virtual machines uses patented vPower technology to mount a virtual machine image to a vSphere or Hyper-V host directly from a compressed and deduplicated backup file.

Because you don't have to retrieve an entire virtual machine (VM) from backup and then copy it to production storage resources, you can start a VM from any restore point (incremental or full) in just a few minutes, rather than the hours of a traditional restore. This significantly reduces recovery time.

Figure 10. VM recovery process using Instant VM Recovery

The VM image backup is used in read-only mode, which preserves the integrity of the backup. All changes are saved separately and applied during the migration of the VM to the production storage system.

Once up and running, the VM can be migrated to production using VMware Storage vMotion, Hyper-V Storage Migration, or Quick Migration, Veeam's proprietary technology.

Restoring a VM from a hardware snapshot

Through integration with storage systems from HPE, NetApp, Dell EMC and Nimble, Veeam can recover individual files and application objects. Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots is responsible for the recovery procedure from hardware snapshots.

Figure 11. How Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots works

The storage system receives a command to create a writable snapshot of the volume. The snapshot is attached to the selected vSphere host as new storage. The recovered VM is temporarily registered on the host, after which the user can use the Instant VM Recovery option to instantly restore it.

Figure 12. Process of restoring a VM from a hardware snapshot in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

The backup server connects virtual disk VM via VMware VADP, after which the user can restore individual folders and files of the guest OS. Once the restore is complete, the storage is disconnected from the vSphere host and the hardware snapshot is deleted.

Backup any data and restore to the Azure cloud

Restore in Microsoft Azure, included with Veeam, allows you to restore machines from Veeam backups to the cloud to optimize resource utilization and enhance recovery capabilities. Thanks to this technology, it is possible to transfer or restore local physical servers to the cloud, personal computers and virtual VMware machines and Hyper-V.

Figure 13. Backup scheme using Direct Restore in Microsoft Azure in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

conclusions

In this review, we took a look at the new version of Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5, which combines backup and replication capabilities in one solution to provide comprehensive protection for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments.

In the new version, Veeam developers paid great attention to system performance and backup and recovery speed. For example, the process of backing up virtual disks has been accelerated up to two times when using high-end storage systems, and the load on production storage systems has been reduced by reducing the number of read-write operations when executing a backup job. New technology Instant VM Recovery allows you to instantly restore virtual machines directly from a backup in just a few clicks.

Another advantage of the new version is the ability to restore virtual machines, files and application objects directly from snapshots of supported storage systems.

Veeam integration with Microsoft Azure and Direct Restore technology in Microsoft Azure allow you to restore data from any Veeam backup to the cloud, helping you optimize resource allocation, improve scalability and increase the efficiency of IT operations, and limit cash costs. Integration with Microsoft 2016 data center technologies allows processing, indexing, and file-level recovery through direct access to the guest operating system.

Certification according to the security requirements of FSTEC of Russia makes it possible to use Veeam Backup & Replication as part of an information system protection system, where the use of certified products is mandatory, for example, in information systems personal data, government information systems (GIS), automated systems management technological process(APCS). Note that the certified Veeam Backup & Replication package now includes the Veeam Agent module for Linux v1, which is designed to protect physical machines running Linux, deployed on-premises or in the cloud.

The disadvantages of the product include the lack of support for Xen and KVM hypervisors, on which the Citrix virtualization platform is based (XenServer, XenApp), Red Hat OpenStack Platform, Oracle OpenStack, and many other public services, such as Amazon EC2, Rackspace and others.

Advantages:

• Certificate of conformity from FSTEC of Russia.
• Instant recovery of virtual machines using Instant VM Recovery technology, which takes about two minutes.
• Restore guest OS files, application objects, or entire VMs from a hardware snapshot, which takes about two minutes.
• Possibility of renewable replication of virtual machines to cloud sites of service providers.
• The ability to restore data to the cloud from any Veeam backup using Direct Restore technology.
• Possibility of disaster recovery from the cloud.
• Wide integration possibilities with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 2016 data center technologies and modern storage systems.
• Support for restoring virtual machines, files and application objects directly from snapshots of supported storage systems.
• Automatic testing of backups.

Flaws:

• Lack of support for Xen and KVM hypervisors.

Veeam Backup & Replication is designed specifically for virtual environments and provides virtual machine image backup capabilities.

Backup technology is recommended for protecting virtual machines with low recovery time objectives (RTO). Typically these are virtual machines that run Tier 2 applications. When a virtual machine fails, it takes some time to recover the virtual machine data from the compressed and deduplicated backup file, which is acceptable for Tier 2 applications.

The advantage of backup technology is the reduction in storage resource requirements. By compressing and deduplicating data, storing backups requires much less storage resources (compared to replication), and the storage systems themselves do not have to be expensive.

Veeam Backup & Replication backs up the entire virtual machine image. Virtual machine data is backed up at the block level, unlike traditional backup solutions that process guest OS files individually. An image-level backup can be used for any recovery scenario: instant recovery of virtual machines; restoring entire virtual machines; recovery of individual guest OS files, as well as virtual machine files.

To back up virtual machines on the Hyper-V platform, Veeam Backup & Replication leverages application-aware machine image backup capabilities (Microsoft VSS support) and VSS components for the Hyper-V platform. During the backup process, Veeam Backup & Replication accesses Microsoft Hyper-V directly and initiates the process of creating a snapshot of the virtual machine. Once a snapshot is created, Veeam Backup & Replication reads the necessary data from it, compresses and deduplicates the data, and then stores it in a repository in a special Veeam format.

To back up virtual machines, you must configure a backup job. A backup job defines when, how, which virtual machines, and to which target device the backup will be performed. A job can be created for one or more virtual machines.

Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to perform both full and incremental backups. Backup chains can be created in three ways:

• using continuous direct incremental backup;
• using direct incremental backup;
• using reverse incremental backup.

During the first session of a backup job, Veeam Backup & Replication always creates a full backup of the virtual machine (a file with a .vbk extension). All subsequent job sessions create incremental backups.

• Files created by Continuous Direct Incremental and Direct Incremental backup methods have a VIB extension.
• Files created by the reverse incremental backup method have a VRB extension.

The number of incremental backups stored on disk is determined by the storage policy settings.

In this section

• Operation conditions
• Basic steps

• Step 1: Create a backup job
• Step 2: Select the virtual machines you want to back up
• Step 3: Eliminate unnecessary machines and virtual machine disks
• Step 4. Specify the order in which objects are processed
• Step 5: Select a proxy and repository
• Step 6: Specify additional settings
• Step 7: Specify the virtual machine's guest OS processing settings
• Step 8: Specify a schedule for the backup job
• Step 9. Check the specified settings and run the task
• Step 10: Monitor your backup progress in real time
• Step 11: Perform an incremental backup

• Final actions

• All backup infrastructure components that will be involved in the backup process must be connected to Veeam Backup & Replication. The list of components includes:

• a Hyper-V host on which virtual machines, SCVMMs, or a Hyper-V cluster are deployed;
• dedicated proxy server;
• repository.

A proxy server and repository are required if you are using a distributed backup infrastructure deployment scenario.

• [Optional] To receive email notifications when a backup job is complete, you must configure notification settings. To do this, in the Veeam Backup & Replication menu, select General Options Email Settings.

To back up a virtual machine:

1. Open a view Backup & Replication.
2. On the Home tab in the toolbar click Backup Job and select VMware vSphere Microsoft Hyper-V to start the wizard New Backup Job.

1. At the Name step Provide a name for the backup job and its description.

A backup job can be created for both virtual machines and virtual machine containers: SCVMM, clusters, hosts, etc.

Adding a container allows you to create a dynamically updated list of virtual machines. When new virtual machines are detected in a container in a virtual environment, Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically update the list of machines in the backup job.

1. On the Virtual Machines step, click Add.
2. Start search on right. Then select the desired virtual machine or container from the list of search results and click Add.

If a virtual machine container is added to a job, you can exclude individual child containers or virtual machines from the job. Additionally, you can exclude individual virtual machine disks. For example, you can specify that you only want to include in the backup system drives cars and exclude all others.

1. On the Virtual Machines step, click Exclusions.
2. To exclude a virtual machine or container from a job, open the VMs. Click Add and select the machines or containers to exclude.

To find the virtual machine or container you need, enter the name or part of the machine or container name in the search field and click Start search on the right.

1. To exclude machine drives, open the tab Disks . Select the machine whose disks you want to exclude from the list and click Edit . Select the drives you want to include in the backup; unselected drives will be excluded.

If the virtual machine was added as part of a container and you want to exclude individual disks from its backup, click Add VM and add this virtual machine to the list as a separate object.

1. Click OK.
2. Click Recalculate to calculate the total size of the virtual machines included in the backup job.

If you've added multiple virtual machines or containers to a backup job, you can specify the order in which they should be processed. This feature is useful if you need to meet backup window requirements and don't know how long virtual machines might take to process. In this case, you can specify that certain virtual machines should be processed first.

1. At the Virtual Machines step Click on the virtual machine or container added to the list.
2. Use the buttons Up and Down to move the virtual machine or container higher or lower in the list. The higher the position of an object in the list, the higher its processing priority.

If you are using a distributed backup infrastructure, specify which proxy server will be used to process and transfer virtual machine data and which repository the created backups will be saved to.

1. On the Storage step, click Choose next to the Backup proxy field . Make sure the window Backup Proxy option Off-host backup selected . Veeam Backup & Replication will redirect the processing load of the virtual machine to the proxy server, thereby offloading the original Hyper-V host in a production environment.
2. Make sure the flag is checkedFailover to on-host backup mode if no suitable off-host proxies available. If a dedicated proxy is not available or is not configured appropriately, Veeam Backup & Replication will use the original Hyper-V host as a proxy to process the virtual machines.
3. In the Backup repository list select the desired repository. Backup files created during the job will be saved to this repository.
4. In field Restore points to keep on diskspecify the number of recovery points you want to store in the repository. By default, Veeam Backup & Replication stores 14 recovery points for virtual machine backups.

If you are using a simple deployment scenario, leave the default settings unchanged. In a simple deployment, the source Hyper-V host serves as the proxy and the media server serves as the repository.

On the Storage step, click Advanced to specify additional settings for the backup job.

1. On the Backup tab select the mode that will be used to create a chain of backups in the repository: constant forward incremental, forward incremental, or reverse incremental.

• Constant forward incremental mode

During the first session of a backup job running in continuous forward incremental backup mode, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a full backup. In subsequent sessions, Veeam Backup & Replication copies only the changed data blocks from the last session and stores this data as recovery points in the repository.

Incremental and do not enable the active full and/or full synthetic backup options.

• Direct incremental mode

During the first session of a backup job running in direct incremental backup mode, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a full backup. In subsequent sessions, Veeam Backup & Replication copies only the changed data blocks from the last session and stores this data as recovery points in the repository.

In addition, Veeam Backup & Replication periodically creates active full and synthetic full backups, which “break” the chain of backup files into small groups.

To use this mode, select the option Incremental and enable the active full and/or full synthetic backup options.

• Reverse incremental mode

During the first session of a backup job running in reverse incremental backup mode, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a full backup of the virtual machine. In subsequent sessions of a backup job, Veeam Backup & Replication copies only the changed blocks of data relative to the last session. The copied data blocks are added to the full backup in the repository.

Thus, a full backup always contains the data of the virtual machine at the latest point in time. Data blocks that have been replaced by copied blocks are stored as a "reverse" restore point next to the full backup.

To use this method, select the option Reverse incremental.

1. If you have selected direct incremental mode, set the flagCreate synthetic full backups periodicallyand specify the day on which a full backup should be created. This feature will allow you to automatically create a full backup at a specified frequency.

To create a synthetic full backup, Veeam Backup & Replication does not copy data from the production environment, but uses a chain of recovery points that are stored in a repository. This ensures that synthetic full backups do not place additional stress on the virtual environment and production storage systems.

1. If you set the flagCreate active full backups periodically, the chain of restore points in the repository will contain several full backups: a full backup created during the first session of the job, and synthetic full backups created according to the specified schedule. To save disk space, set the flagTransform previous full backup chains into rollbacks. After creating a synthetic full backup, Veeam Backup & Replication will rebuild the backup chain so that there is only one full backup left - the synthetic one. Previous restore points will be rebuilt into reverse restore points.

1. Open the tab Storage . Enable inline data deduplication.

If a backup job processes a group of virtual machines, Veeam Backup & Replication deduplicates identical blocks of data across those virtual machines. Additionally, Veeam Backup & Replication eliminates empty data blocks on virtual machine logical disks. Data deduplication can significantly reduce storage resource requirements. For example, if you copy virtual machines created from the same template, the backup size can be reduced by up to 90%.

1. To reduce the size of the backup file, in the Compression level select data compression level. Veeam Backup & Replication offers 5 data compression levels, each with its own compression ratio: None, Dedupe-friendly, Optimal, High and Extreme.
2. Make sure the flag is set Exclude swap file blocks . The size of the Microsoft Windows paging file on a virtual machine's guest OS can vary significantly between backup job sessions. Veeam Backup & Replication will determine which data blocks belong to the page file and exclude such blocks from processing. As a result, backup speed will increase and the size of incremental backups will decrease.
3. Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to create encrypted backups. To enable encryption, set the flag Enable backup file encryption and specify the password you want to use for encryption.

Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to restore data from encrypted backups even if the password is lost. For more information, see section Recovering data from encrypted backups in case of lost password.

1. Open the tab Notifications . Set the flagSend email notifications to the following recipientsand provide your address Email. After the backup job completes, you will receive a notification to the specified address with information about the results of the job.

To receive notification, you must configure your email settings in Veeam Backup & Replication. To do this, in the Veeam Backup & Replication menu, select General Options and set the necessary settings on the tab Email Settings.

1. Open the tab Hyper-V.

1. If you are backing up virtual machines that are running applications that do not support Microsoft VSS (for example, virtual machines running Linux), make sure that theEnable Hyper-V guest quiescence.
2. Make sure the flag is setTake crash consistent backup instead of suspending VM. Veeam Backup & Replication will use a stateless backup method instead of a cold backup method, allowing you to create a backup without shutting down the virtual machine. For more information, see section .
3. Make sure the flag is setUse changed block tracking data. In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will use its own technology for tracking changed data blocks: CBT (Changed Block Tracking) to create backups. The CBT module stores a list of modified data blocks. Instead of scanning the virtual machine image and identifying changed blocks, Veeam Backup & Replication will query the CBT module for changed block information.

Using the CBT mechanism can significantly increase the speed and efficiency of incremental backups. For example, if 5% of the data blocks have changed since the last session of the backup job, the incremental backup speed using the CBT module can increase up to 20 times.

At this step, you can specify settings for processing the guest OS of the virtual machine:

• Processing a virtual machine based on the state of applications running on it. This feature can be used if virtual machines running applications with Microsoft support VSS (such as Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint) and other applications.

Veeam Backup & Replication uses Volume Shadow Copy Services (Microsoft VSS) or command scripts to back up these virtual machines. Volume Shadow Copy Services and scripts allow you to create a consistent image of a virtual machine, even if it is this moment applications are running, the data of which is actively used or updated. If you restore a virtual machine from such a backup, you can restore all services and applications on the virtual machine without losing data.

• Indexing virtual machine guest OS files. This feature will allow you to search for guest OS files in backups and restore them with one click. When you select this option, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a directory of virtual machine guest OS files. For more information, see section Search guest OS files and restore with one click.

To create a stateful application backup and index guest OS files:

1. At the Guest Processing step set the flagEnable application-aware processing.
2. Set the flag Enable guest file system indexing.
3. Specify an account with administrative rights for all virtual machines added to the job. To do this, click Add to the right of the Guest OS Credentials field , select account type (Standard account, Linux, Linux private key) and enter the username and password for the account. If you have entered information for this account before, you can select it from the list Guest OS Credentials.

An account is required to install, launch, and remove the Veeam module in the guest OS of a virtual machine, which coordinates the processes of indexing and processing the virtual machine, taking into account the state of applications.

By default, the specified account credentials are used for all virtual machines in the job. If you need to specify different accounts for virtual machines, click Credentials Set User > Standard credentials/Linux credentials. Then provide the account credentials with administrator rights for the selected machine. Repeat the procedure for all virtual machines in the job.

1. To indicate additional settings click Applications . Select the virtual machine from the list and click Edit.
2. On the General tab It is recommended to select the optionTry application processing, but ignore failures. In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will continue to perform backups even if there are problems processing the virtual machine using VSS or scripting. If a consistent backup fails, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a stateless backup of the application data.
3. If a virtual machine with applications that use transaction logs is added to the task, select the optionProcess transaction logs with this job. Once the backup job completes successfully, Veeam Backup & Replication will truncate transaction logs to save disk space.

If you use Veeam Backup & Replication along with third party application for backup at the virtual machine guest OS level, which uses transaction logs, select the option Perform copy only . This feature will help avoid application conflicts.

1. In the main wizard window, click Indexing , select the desired virtual machine from the list and click Edit > Windows indexing or Linux indexing.
2. Select the Index everything option . Veeam Backup & Replication will create a directory of all guest OS files.

The backup task can be started manually or automatically according to a specified schedule. To set up a schedule for a backup job:

1. At the Schedule step set the flag Run the job automatically . If you do not set this flag, the backup job will need to be started manually.
2. Select the desired schedule type: daily, monthly, periodic or continuous. In addition, you can create a chain of tasks. In this case, tasks will be launched automatically one after another.
3. Make sure the flag is set Retry failed VM processing . If all virtual machines cannot be processed during a backup job session, Veeam Backup & Replication will rerun the backup job for the unprocessed virtual machines.
4. Set the flag Terminate job if it exceeds allowed backup window and click Window . Specify the backup window for your production environment. If a backup job does not complete within the specified window, Veeam Backup & Replication will force the job to end so as not to burden the production environment.
5. Click Apply.

1. Check the settings you specified for the backup job.
2. Set the flag Run the job when I click Finish and click Finish . The backup job will start.

You can track job progress information in real time. Job information includes data such as job completion percentage, duration, backup speed, data transfer bottlenecks, amount of data read, processed and transferred, and so on. You can view information both about the task as a whole and about individual objects in the task.

1. Open a view Backup & Replication.
2. Jobs.
3. In the workspace, select a task. A statistics panel will open at the bottom of the main application window.
4. From the list on the left, select a virtual machine or virtual machine container to get data about an individual object in a job. Please note that Veeam Backup & Replication processes objects in a job in parallel, not sequentially.
5. Wait until the backup job completes. Please note that the task must complete with the status Success Warning (with a warning). If the task completes with the status Failed (with an error), the backup file will not be created and you will not be able to restore data from such a backup.

To create an incremental backup of a virtual machine:

1. Open a view Backup & Replication.
2. In the object hierarchy, click on the node Jobs.
3. In the workspace, click right click mouse on the task and select Start . Wait for the task to complete. Please note that the task must complete with the status Success (successfully) or at least Warning (with a warning).

After the backup job completes, the resulting backup file is saved to the repository that you selected as the storage destination. During the first session of a backup job, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a full virtual machine backup file with a VBK extension. During subsequent job sessions, changes that were made on the virtual machine since the previous session are copied.

Depending on the backup mode you choose, Veeam Backup & Replication handles incremental changes differently:

• When running in Continuous Direct and Direct Incremental backup modes, Veeam Backup & Replication saves incremental changes to a VIB file next to the full VBK backup file.
• When running in reverse incremental backup mode, Veeam Backup & Replication copies the changed blocks and adds them to a full backup file (VBK). The data blocks that are replaced are stored in the repository as a reverse incremental file with the VRB extension next to the VBK file.

In addition, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a file with backup metadata next to the backup files. This file has a VBM extension and contains information about the backup job, the number and structure of backup files and the virtual machines contained in them, recovery points, etc. The metadata file is used when importing backups and to match backup jobs with existing backups.

To check the backup results:

1. In the repository, open the desired folder.
2. In this folder, find the child folder with the name of the backup job and open it.

Make sure the folder contains files with the extensions VBK, VIB/VRB and VBM.

1. Open a view Backup & Replication.
2. In the object hierarchy, click on the node Jobs.
3. In the workspace, double-click the backup job. Check the result of the task.
4. If you have configured to send a notification when a task is completed, run mail application and open your inbox ( Inbox ). Make sure that it contains 2 messages with the results of the task: one about a full backup, the second about an incremental one.

Hardware	CPU: modern x86/x64 processor (minimum 4 cores recommended for optimal backup performance). Using faster processors generally improves backup performance. Memory: 1024MB RAM (2048MB RAM when using local SQL Express installation). Using faster memory (DDR3) generally improves backup performance. Hard disk space: 100 MB. Network: 1Gbit/sec recommended due to backup performance considerations.
OS	Microsoft Windows XP SP3. Microsoft Windows 2003 SP2. Microsoft Windows Vista SP2. Microsoft Windows 2008 SP2. Microsoft Windows 2008 R2. Microsoft Windows 7.
Software	Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 (included in the setup) Microsoft PowerShell 2.0 or later
For the manager:
Hardware	CPU: x86/x64 processor Memory: 1024MB RAM (2048MB RAM when using local SQL Express installation). Hard disk space: 25MB. Network: 1Gbit/sec recommended due to backup performance considerations.
	Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the following operating systems are supported: Microsoft Windows XP SP3. Microsoft Windows 2003 SP2. Microsoft Windows Vista SP2. Microsoft Windows 2008 SP2. Microsoft Windows 2008 R2. Microsoft Windows 7.
	Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008. If you do not have one, the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager setup will install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express SP3.
Software	Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 or later. Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.1 or later (IIS 6 Management Compatibility and Windows Authentication components for IIS 7.0). If not installed, the MS Windows installation disk to set up IIS. Browser: Internet Explorer 6.0 or later Mozilla Firefox 3.0 or later. Microsoft Excel 2003 or later (to view report data exported from Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager).

2. Installation.

Let's deploy the vApp and deploy Windows 2008 R2 in it:

Delivered. Launch the console:

3. Configuration

First, let's add vCenter Server:

Let's see what happened:

By the way, Veeam prescribes firewall rules during installation, so we don’t need to go into its settings.

Now our vCenter appears in the console. Yes, don’t forget to write in hosts file IP addresses of all ESXs:

4. Create a backup task.

Let's deploy a test machine in our vAPP, for example, TestServer01. Let it be Windows Server 2003 x86; At the same time, let's deploy 2003 x64:

Let's try to backup it somewhere - create a backup task TestServer01:

Next, you need to select a connection method to the storage area - if our backup server is connected directly to the storage area where the backup machines are located, then select Direct SAN Access. If not, and the backup server is a virtual machine (our case), then select Virtual Appliance or Network:

In the Advanced tab, by default the item is selected – Failover to Network mode, if primary backup mode fails – do not touch it. Those. if everything fails, Veeam will try to pick up the files over the network without the ESX I/O Stack.

Let's attach the ball to our backup server:

Let's continue creating the task:

Now let's dig into the Advanced tab:

On the Backup tab, we configure the type of backup and the schedule of full copies and incremental copies, on the Storage tab – deduplication and optimization, basically we don’t change anything; on the Notifications tab - where to send an alert, vSphere tab - do not change, similarly to the Advanced tab - nothing needs to be changed J By the way, clear (unlike Veritas NetBackup) tips are given everywhere.

For application consistency and quick search files in the future, check both boxes and enter the server login password. Or we don’t mark anything if it’s not necessary.

In the Advanced tab, you can configure the server backup to ignore errors when trying to bring the application into a consistent state:

And finally, the task execution schedule:

We don’t create schedules (we’ll run them manually), click create:

That's it, you can try running the task:

We wait, check our folder and backup log:

As a result, we backed up the TestServer01 server with 6GB of data and compressed it to 3x. Report:

Now the backup is reflected in the completed list:

Yes, we’ll set up mail for sending alerts – tools – options – enter mail parameters and mailboxes.

After configuration, we test the Send Message button and now we will receive information about completed tasks.

5. Recovering virtual machines.

Recovery methods are visible here:

Let's look at Instant VM Recovery and Full VM Recovery.

Click Instant VM Recovery - in this case the machine will be launched directly from the archive (oh how!).

And we see the mounted machine:

Let's kill it and do a normal recovery - Full VM recovery:

We look in the vCenter console - the machine has recovered and started:

6. SureBackup – testing the performance of virtual machines and applications.

First, let's go through the wizards - create a Virtual Lab. Yes, Veeam creates it - we just configure it:

We look at the vCenter console - Veeam Lab has appeared:

Now we create an Application Group and add the VM under test:

By clicking the Edit button, you can configure what exactly we are testing (services, pings, VM Tools):

Let's launch Job - while Joba is running, Instant Recovery of our server occurs and tests it according to the parameters specified earlier when creating the Application Group:

In addition, when verifying a server, you can click on its name and the server console will appear.

We got an error during verification because... our Veeam Lab is not connected anywhere:

Files can be restored to a backup server, on a share, etc.

Here is the manual in brief J

p.s. In fact, Veeam Backup&Replication can also do replication of virtual machines, in which case we will have one VM - a productive one, and a second - its copy. If something happens, you can make a Failover between the replica and the main VM. You can return the failover. Further, Veeam can stupidly copy virtual machines (who would doubt it J). And finally, Veeam can copy files. By the way, machine backups can be done not only on a share, but also on VMFS storage; for this you just need to specify the login and password of the root of the ESX host.

Licensed by Veeam on ESX host socket processors. There are 2 editions – Standard and Enterprise:

	Standard Edition	Enterprise Edition
SureBackup recovery verification	You can verify the recoverability of the latest backup by mounting a VM from the backup file with the help of instant VM recovery and manually testing it.	The recovery verification process is automated. You can select any restore point, not only the latest one.
Universal Application Item-Level Recovery		Includes Active Directory restore wizard and the wizard for user-directed recovery.
Browsing and searching for VM guest OS files within indexed backups	You can browse and search for files in current backups only.	You can search and browse for files in both current and archived backups

The differences are not so huge; Standard just manual check and no U-AIR. By the way, U-Air is a feature that allows you to restore AD, SQL, etc. applications piece by piece.