I am happy to announce that Veeam Availability Suite v9 is now generally available (GA) and ready for download! This latest version is packed with so many new features that it’s difficult to talk about them all on this blog, but I highly recommend you check out the What’s New in Veeam Backup & Replication v9 document because it’s packed with details about all the new things we’ve up into v9 (read also What’s New in Veeam ONE v9).
If you’re just catching up, here are the blog posts we published about many of the major features in v9:
- Integration with EMC Storage Snapshots coming in Veeam Availability Suite v9
- NEW Veeam Cloud Connect Replication coming in v9
- Veeam Availability Suite v9, how many Storage Enhancements!
- Announcing Veeam Explorer for Oracle AND enhancements to existing Explorers!
- Enterprise Enhancements in v9: ROBO and Tape
- HP StoreOnce Catalyst integration coming in v9!
- Backup Storage Integration coming in Veeam Availability Suite v9
- Introducing Unlimited Scale-out Backup Repository, coming in Veeam Availability Suite v9!
While v9 is packed with new features, two major ones that really stand out for me: One is Veeam Cloud Connect Replication and the other is Scale-out Backup Repository. Either one of these features would have been reason enough for a major release, but when you consider the amount of effort that has gone into just these two features, I’m amazed our developers were able to pull it off.
Veeam Cloud Connect Replication is going to open up DRaaS to entirely new markets where it wasn’t feasible before. Not only is this wonderful for Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) partners who take advantage of the opportunity by offering new, valuable services, but it’s also great for our customers, especially those that only have a single site and want true disaster recovery. With the capability to fail over the entire site or just a sub-set of VMs, Veeam Cloud Connect Replication covers multiple disaster scenarios. We’re confident this is going to redefine the DRaaS industry in the years to come.
The Scale-out Backup Repository is yet another feature that our customers have been asking for, but we delivered it in a way they’re not expecting. Rather than just creating simple storage pools you can easily expand, we went the extra step to allow you to set performance profiles. This means that you can have a fast class of backup storage — like SSD — to hold the incremental backups and a slower tier to handle the full backups. This makes incremental backups much faster, and because they don’t take as much space as full backups, you can save on that precious SSD space. This is just the beginning for the Scale-out Backup Repository, so keep an eye out for what we come up with next.
Finally, I’d like to address the fact that we promised to release v9 in 2015. The truth is we did … we just didn’t make it widely available with a GA release. We RTM’ed the code on Dec. 16, 2015, and made it available to our VCSP partners so they could start building their DRaaS services to ensure we would have partners ready to offer Veeam Cloud Connect Replication at launch. We did the same thing with v8, and moving forward, we’ll continue doing this. We want our partners to have a chance to build their services so our customers can take advantage of them from day one of the release. With the holidays so close, we decided to push GA into January, freeing up time for our customers to enjoy their holidays.
We’ll have another point release in 2016 to coincide with Windows Server 2016, and I’m sure we’ll sneak in a few additional features and enhancements that didn’t make the v9 release. Keep your eyes on the Veeam blog and Veeam social media channels for more news coming soon.
JOIN us for a LIVE webinar, It’s here! NEW Veeam Availability Suite v9 on Jan. 26 (North America & EMEA) and Jan. 27 (APAC.)