Veeam has just released a new version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure v3. In this release, a great number of features and capabilities have been included to deliver on the promise of true cloud-native data protection.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure is a cloud-native backup solution that delivers enterprise-grade backup consistency to the Microsoft Azure public cloud. Packed full of features and capabilities, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure is a component of the Veeam-centralized data management suite.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure v3 contains many new features and key enhancements.
Azure SQL
More and more customers are turning to managed database services to provide capabilities to their businesses. Simplifying the deployment and management of traditional SQL environments, Azure SQL is a fully managed database service. While simplifying the management of these databases is key to the uptake of these services, protecting the data contained in these databases has become a challenge. With any cloud service, the data protection is always the responsibility of the consumer, and while the provider may provide an SLA for uptime, the data itself is always the concern. Corruption, ransomware attacks, or even accidental deletion of this data must always be protected against.
With Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, you can now protect your Azure SQL data. Simply creating an Azure SQL backup policy allows you to configure backups of the managed Azure SQL databases. With in-built staging capabilities to process backups, greater control is handed to the backup operators. Staging servers configured in Microsoft Azure can be used to process the database backups more efficiently.
Data retention can be configured for a different number of configurations, from daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, and additionally, backup archiving can be configured to lower the storage costs for longer-term data retention. As with all of Veeam’s cloud products, the in-built cost estimation wizard gives guidance on the cost of the backups, including giving guidance on storage costs and suggesting alternatives.
Azure Key Vault support
With Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, you can now use Azure Key Vault keys to encrypt the backup data at rest in an object storage backup repository. These keys are created in the Microsoft Azure console and then used to encrypt the backup data at rest. This provides secure backup storage of the data in the Azure Blob storage repositories.
Azure Archive Storage
Cloud-based object storage is an easy low-cost way to store backup data. With Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, support for Azure Blob archive has been included in this release. Providing low-cost, long-term data retention for backup data being stored in the Microsoft Azure public cloud. It is easily configurable from within the backup policy scheduling wizard by selecting an archive tier repository and defining the retention periods.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure v3 contains some significant enhancements to provide true cloud-native data protection. While these features are extremely significant for cloud-based data protection, for a number of customers who are living in a multi-cloud world, a more centralized approach is needed. Rather than having multiple standalone products protecting different platforms, Veeam provides integration into Veeam Backup & Replication to allow customers to centrally manage all their platforms, whether it be on premises, such as VMware vSphere and Hyper-V, or in the cloud with Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google Cloud Platform.
