Here’s the information from my email for those that did not sign up to be notified:

Breakthrough Technology: Test and Verify the Recoverability of EVERY Backup

Veeam is enhancing the SureBackup™ capabilities in Veeam Backup & Replication™ with a breakthrough technology that overcomes the final obstacle of image-level backups. IT professionals will have the ability to verify the RECOVERABILITY of EVERY backup of EVERY virtual machine EVERY time. It’s never been possible before.

SureBackup introduces a new patent-pending technology that allows IT professionals to run a virtual machine directly from a compressed backup file.

By publishing the content of backup files directly to ESX hosts, you can:

• Eliminate the need to extract backup files
• Test and verify EVERY backup in a matter of minutes, without affecting backup windows
• Perform recoverability testing without additional hardware or staff

The same technology also allows for item-level restore for any virtualized application, on any OS (patent-pending).

This exciting new technology will be made available in version 5.0 of Veeam Backup & Replication, scheduled for release this summer.

Sound too good to be true? Join us for a free webinar on Wednesday, March 24 at 2:00pm EDT to find out more. Live Webinar – Register Now!

Can’t wait? Go to www.veeam.com/surebackup NOW!

I was actually invited to Veeam’s pre release blogger briefing over the weekend, and the rest of this post is my notes and thoughts about what I learned during briefing.

Before continuing I want to be clear. I have not yet used Veeam SureBackup or a beta copy of Backup and Replication V5.

SureBackup is not available until Veeam Backup and Recover v5 is available

Veeam made it very clear to all of us on the call that for now SureBackup is just a technology announcement. Veeam feels that this breakthrough feature for full image VM backup deserved some time to be understood before it hit the market. Veeam told us SureBackup will be a feature of Veeam Backup and Replication version 5 which will be due sometime in Q3 2010.

What is it and how is it done?

Simply put, the magic of Veeam SureBackup is a wizard that walks an administrator through the configuration of mounting VMs in their compressed Veeam backup file format. This wizard, still to be named later, will create a NFS share from the Veeam Backup Server and automatically configure NFS access from an ESX host. All VM verification, credentials and ESX host information is identified and configured during the wizard. My understanding is that there is complete flexibility in choosing which virtual machines and hosts are used during each verification attempt.

Since the Veeam Backup Server is a Windows host, Veeam has developed it’s own proprietary NFS server. Multiple VMs can be mounted simultaneously and are isolated via a Veeam network fencing feature. The NFS mount is temporary and read only, and it will be removed once the administrator completes the verification process.

Why is that unique and helpful?

Imagine the ability to test your restores. Power on the full VM and it’s dependent VMs without shutting down the production originals. Start an isolated instance of your Domain Controllers so you can also start your Exchange server, for example. Know for a fact that your full VM backups can be successfully powered on when needed and your applications work as expected on the restored copies. Do all of this from the compressed backup files and not by transferring the VM back to your primary storage.

Is SureBackup competition for VMware SRM?

No it’s not. SRM requires SAN based replication. Veeam SureBackup requires full image backups from Veeam Backup and Replication. SRM is intended to leave VMs running at a DR site after failing over. SureBackup uses read only VMs that are designed to be used temporarily. Once the restore is verified the wizard ends and the NFS mount is removed.

I’ll point out that some interesting use cases may be possible. Can you clone or Storage VMotion a SureBackup copy of a VM? Could you replicate your Veeam Backup repository to a DR site and use another Veeam Backup and Replication Server to run the Verification wizard? I’m sure users will explore these unsupported possibilities and report their success on the Veeam Forums.

General Thoughts

By rolling up the administrator sleeves, other full image backup products could be used to test restores in an isolated virtual network on an ESX host. However, no other solution automates that process and makes the configuration as simple as a wizard. No other backup product would allow you to run the restored VMs from the actual backup file in the backup repository. Veeam definitely has a great idea with SureBackup.

Of course, VI environments will still need available capacity to run the verification copies.

Another cool use case will be the ability to start up any incremental backup of VM – not just the latest full image. This means you could go back as far as needed to find a version of a file or operating system prior to corruption, infection, or deletion. An admin will be able to drag the file from the verification VM to a restore location if needd.

Before continuing, it is most clear that VMware Studio’s designed intent is for ISVs and developers to package their applications as preconfigured, ready to import virtual appliances. Now with version 2.0 even multi tiered applications can be wrapped up as a vApp in vSphere and exported as an OVF containing several VMs and then imported by any VMware virtualization host (free, hosted, or bare metal). If you are not already familiar with VMware Studio check out the Studio 2.0 Beta Overview web page for a complete listing of features, but the primary topic of interest (to me and the others on today’s podcast) seems to be centered around how enterprises can leverage VMware Studio, vApps, and OVF templates.

This is where the lines get blurry to me, and I’ll outline potential Studio / OVF usage that may be “outside of the box” from the VMware software’s intended purpose. Or is it? You tell me.

vCenter / Deploy from template

The ability to export any VM as an OVF from the VI Client by itself, let alone VMware Studio, opens the door for template deployment in environments without vCenter. Build a VM to desired corporate standards and then export a copy of it to a shared network drive where it can be used as a master image for future deployments on any virtual platform that supports OVF.

With VMware Studio build a multiple VM apllication as a vApp. Configure the web server and the database for example, and before adding any data export the combination as an OVF. Deploy the vApp OVF as a master template as needed.

Sure, vCenter offers so much more automation for this process, but what about for deployment between ESX hosts that are not managed by the same vCenter or don’t share the same storage?

Lab Manager / Development

Building on the template idea, couldn’t VMware Studio and OVF exports be used as a poor man’s Lab Manager library for a development enviroment? Once again, this is most appropriate when cloning is not possible due to a lack of shared storage.

Why not export a set of VMs and import them to Workstation or Fusion on your personal computer? Do your work and import the set back when satisfied with the results.

VCB / VM Image backup

We are talking about full image copies of VMs that can be imported to any VMware virtualization host anywhere, right? Full images of vApps configured, tweaked, hardened, and optimized for each other none the less.

SRM / DR recovery

OK, the fail over automation of SRM might be the biggest stretch for replacement by OVF exports, but the ability to combine a 10 VM domain as a vApp and set the startup order of the VMs for when the vApp OVF is imported was discussed as an example on the podcast. Importing that big OVF is certainly going to take longer than SRM’s storage replication provided readiness, but the import is still quicker than server builds and tape recovery.

The v12n community rolls up it’s sleeves for challenges that seem way harder than the scenarios I’ve mentioned in this post. Am I assuming too much for VMware’s new virtual appliance software studio?

Monitor and Manage VMs on the Go

The VMM beta is now available to the entire virtualization universe at the link above, but Hyper9 has a special offer for VM /ETC readers that comes with some exclusive perks:

• automatic entry to win a mobile device in a contest starting in June
• a limited edition Hyper9 t-shirt (in exchange for some VMM feedback)
• 50% discount should you choose to purchase

Be one of the first 15 readers to comment on this post to take advantage of this invitation. Be sure to use a valid email address so that Hyper9 can contact you about the beta download, your shirt, and more.

What is VMM? Hyper9 describes the product and it’s features as follows:

VMM offers administrators remote monitoring and support – browser-based management that works on a wide variety of mobile devices.  Developed by virtualization infrastructure expert Andrew Kutz, VMM offers:

Features

• Monitor and manage on the go
• Monitor multiple host and VM performance stats (CPU, Memory)
• Understand datacenter health

Mobile

• Monitor Host and VM Performance Statistics (CPU, Memory)
• Control VMs and Take Action on the Go (start, stop, pause, reset, disable network)
• Optimized for Mobile Devices (Apple iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android and Windows Mobile Devices)

Supported Hypervisors

• VMware Server 2
• VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Hosts (VMware ESX 3.5, ESXi 3.5, VirtualCenter 2.5)
• Microsoft Hyper-V
• Citrix XenServer 5

Supported Platforms

• VMM is hosted as an Apache Tomcat Web application
• Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X

Hyper9 also has a working demo of the full and lite web interfaces (screen shot at the start of this post). Go here for demo access instructions.

I wonder if Hyper9 will eventually combine the mobile phone functionality that VMM provides with it’s flagship search based management, monitoring, and reporting tool? Sounds like a great roadmap to me, but I am just speculating.

With all the recent talk about the software from Rove and VMware that provides mobile device access to managing VMware Infrastructure, administrators now need to consider how they will actually connect mobile phones to vCenter and ESX hosts behind the firewall. Fortunately, a thread from the VMware vCenter Mobile Access Technology Preview Community sheds some insight on how VMware actually tested the vCenter Mobile Access virtual appliance (vCMA) with several different mobile devices.

From The official “how will I connect to this thing” thread:

1. BlackBerry, with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). This is by far the easiest way, because BlackBerries that are connected to a BES are already on their company’s intranets. Loading the app should be as simple as pointing at the app URL (the format of which will be documented at release).

2. Iphone. We tested two methods successfully. The first was to create an ipsec vpn connection to our intranet. Once we were in things worked flawlessly. The second method worked on every device we tested but is slightly specific to our setup. We used our generic ssl/vpn gateway to authenticate, then we used the web proxying feature of the vpn landing page to get to the url we needed. The resulting app ends up with a vpn “bar” at the top since the page is hosted in this case but functionality is not impaired.

3. Symbian/Nokia. The ssl/vpn solution worked well. There might be vpn solutions out there, check with your network administrator.

4. WinMo. The ssl/vpn solution worked well. We couldn’t get the built-in vpn client to negotiate with our network but it certainly seems possible.

5. Android. The ssl/vpn solution worked well. There might be vpn solutions out there, check with your network administrator.

6. BlackBerry without BES. Can you guess? The ssl/vpn solution worked well. There might be vpn solutions out there, check with your network administrator.

I would guess that the majority of admins will have a Blackberry on a BES (Enterprise Server) like me (scenario 1 above). A quick test to make sure that your Blackberry device can see internal servers in this case would be to open your phone browser and go to the FQDN or ip address of a vCenter or ESX server. You should get the VMware web interface. I was able to do this on my Blackberry 8900 Curve. Now I am wondering why I never thought to do this sooner?!!

VMware announced yesterday that the vCMA is now available for download as a technology preview beta. Rove’s Mobile Admin is available in a 14 day trial.

Here’s some details from Srinivas’ post about vCMA:

“Did you ever get paged when you are in a meeting about some virtual machine that needed to be restarted?  Or, did you ever get an alert when you are at your kid’s soccer game or at the movies that a particular server is overloaded?  Actually, imagine any scenario where you need to actively manage your datacenter but you are nowhere close to a PC.  Wouldn’t it be nice to act on the notification from your mobile phone?  After all, we are now a generation that doesn’t leave home without a mobile phone…

Introducing VMware vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA).  vCMA allows you to monitor and manage VMware Infrastructure from your mobile phone with an interface that is optimized for such devices. Specifically, it allows you to:

• Search for virtual machines in your data center
• Migrate virtual machines from one host to another using vMotion
• Execute recovery plans using VMware Site Recovery Manager
• Access Scheduled Tasks, Alarms and Events
• And much more…”

This YouTube video shows off the vCMA on a Blackberry.

vCMA is the second mobile phone VMware VI administration product I have covered this week. I also posted about Rove’s Mobile Admin 4.2.

This early edition is for beta testing only, and VMware strongly suggests not to use this edition in a production environment. There is also a vCenter on Linux install guide .pdf available for download.

I’m looking forward to my current download completing so I can explore vCenter on Linux. I will not be able to post anything immediately as verbiage from the download page clearly states this technical preview is “highly confidential”.

Hopefully this is the start of some exciting new product announcements and features to coincide with the opening day of VMworld Europe 2009 tomorrow!

I’m not claiming to be able to run virtual machines on the Hyper-V VM. Fact is I have not tried. My intent is testing and learning the remote administration for now. I am planning on joining this VM to an Active Directory Domain along with my Windows 7 Beta install. Hopefully joining the server and client to a domain won’t be as frustrating as trying to figure out the configuration for a workgroup! I’ll probably post that process too when I get around to it.

So, the rest of this post shows the build in a table formatted steps with images. SB, this one’s for you!

My VMware Server 2.0 specs Host is running 64bit Ubuntu 8.10 1 x 3.8 GHz Tri Core AMD 4 GB RAM
Create new virtual machine
Choose 64 bit server 2008
Only 512 MB of RAM for the install. I may bump this to 1 GB later.
Default virtual disk size was 24 Gb. I left the default
Left the Network Connection NAT for the install. Since my client I will use to remotely manage is on a different host I will change this to bridged later.
Don’t add a floppy drive or a usb controller I did not need to modify anything in the .vmx file or add any other configurations or modifications
Boot the VM from the Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta DVD
Begin the install by choosing the language
Install Now
Accept the license agreement
Format the virtual disk
Installing Windows
VM reboots and continues installation
Eventually (there might have been another reboot that I missed while watching American Idol auditions)
Set the administrator Password.
Set the password
Hyper-V Server 2008 is up and running and ready for configuration
View from the VMware Server 2.0 web interface of the running Hyper-V Server.

There’s nothing really too complicated or tricky, but nonetheless use this guide to get an idea how simple the VirtualBox Windows 7 installation process really is.

System Hardware VirtualBox is running on is 32 bit Ubuntu version 8.10