Public cloud remains a hot item. Many IT organizations around the globe are already running production workloads in the public cloud, or are at least investigating the possibility of doing so. This trend will only continue, and more and more workloads will continue to be made available through public clouds.
Everyone can see why running workloads in the public cloud, in terms of both cost and management, is of interest to enterprise organizations, Today, however, adoption of the public cloud for production workloads still remains low because of fears related to availability. Not being able to back up your server instances in such clouds means that the risk of business disruption is huge. Although there are potential solutions today, they aren’t that easy to work with and they’re pricey or they require too many resources from your IT staff.
While Veeam already provides a backup agent for Microsoft Windows with Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE, the truth about public clouds is that the majority of workloads are running on Linux.
Bringing availability to Linux servers is no easy feat. There are many free solutions out there that utilize scripts and native functionality, but these also require a lot of work. Linux administrators don’t mind rolling up their sleeves to get the job done, but still, all that work means that the total cost of ownership (TCO) can be very high and essential functionality to deliver the needed recover time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) is just not available. Finally, what happens when your Linux admin leaves the company? How can the support continue for that solution?
Although paid solutions do address these issues, most of them are highly complex and expensive. As a result, a lot of those workloads are not being protected at all.
It was obvious to Veeam that there is a real need for Veeam Backup for Linux.
Veeam Backup for Linux
Veeam Software, which already provides solutions for interacting with public clouds such as the Veeam FastSCP for Microsoft Azure, is now proud to announce Veeam Backup for Linux!
Veeam Backup for Linux is a simple and free backup agent that runs on Linux servers. It’s designed to give you the capabilities you need to ensure the Availability of your individual Linux cloud instances or on-premises physical Linux servers.
Solution
Veeam Backup for Linux is an agent-based solution running inside the guest OS (operating system).
Veeam’s solution supports incremental backups with a proprietary changed block tracking (CBT) driver. And, while being fully compatible with LVM (Logical Volume Manager), Veeam does not leverage LVM snapshots. Instead, it has implemented a proprietary volume snapshot provider that does not suffer from the same limitations as LVM snapshots. This allows Veeam to take block-level snapshots on a vast range of file systems while storing snapshot data on the designated storage device, instead of on the actual volume you are backing up! And what’s more important, the solution can take a consistent snapshot of the server’s storage by using only the built-in functionality of Veeam Backup for Linux.
From a distro point of view, Veeam Backup for Linux will support most Debian- and Red Hat-based distros right in v1 (the exact number of supported distros will be announced closer to the release). Rest assured, Veeam aims to quickly expand coverage in the following updates based on your feedback:
- Configuration will allow for backup options ranging from the entire server, to volume-level, to file-level. This will give you the ability to restore specific files or volumes on your server, or even the entire server with bare-metal recovery.
- Administrators will also have the ability to use pre-freeze and post-freeze scripts so they can prepare the workloads on their server for backup to also make sure everything is in a consistent state on the application level.
- The available management options will include a web-based GUI, command-line interface and configuration files. For those who likes to work via command line, Veeam has created a minimalistic, but informative, console interface that provides real-time info in an accessible form on job progress and performance statistics.
Note: The UI is not yet final and is subject to change.
Dependencies are kept to a minimum to make sure that the installation will go as smoothly as possibly for most of configurations.
Veeam Backup for Linux comes with SQLite, which is a lightweight local database engine that will store job settings, statistics and more. Don’t worry, SQLite has a tiny footprint that won’t steal your server resources. Many of you know that Firefox also uses SQLite as an in-proc database engine.
Recovery
Backup is nothing without recovery. It is something we state often and will probably state more in the future. After all, why back up your data if you can’t recover it? Veeam Backup for Linux will support file-level recovery, volume-level recovery and bare-metal recovery through the use of a Recovery Media delivered by Veeam. Bottom line? It’s everything you need to be sure that you can regain access to your lost data as quickly as possible.
Integration
Veeam Backup for Linux is a free solution, but if you own Veeam Availability Suite or Veeam Backup & Replication, you will be able to take advantage of your existing Veeam repositories as backup targets! This will allow you to perform basic monitoring and management for all incoming backup jobs, receive email notifications about backup status, encrypt backup files, archive them to tape, or copy to the cloud for off-site protection.
This integration also means you will be able to leverage all standard Veeam Backup & Replication capabilities for your granular restores, similar to those available today for Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE.
Conclusion
Backup and recovery of Linux cloud instances and physical servers are not easy tasks. In many cases, data is not as protected as it should be, which limits cloud adoption for many organizations. With Veeam Backup for Linux, expected to become generally available in early 2016, Veeam will give you a simple and free backup agent that can protect Linux servers running anywhere. You’ll also get flexible recovery options, including bare-metal recovery, and optional integration with Veeam Backup & Replication for even more functionality.
A closed beta version of Veeam Backup for Linux will be available in early 2016 on a first come, first served basis. Apply for access to the beta code – Veeam Backup for Linux beta.
See also
Veeam Community Forums: Veeam v9 Backup Repository Linux Server – shutdown