Veeam Software has just released the long-awaited Update 4 as an RTM (Release To Manufacture). The big winner from this release is the Service Provider community. It has new enhancements and a new features; so, let’s explore it and see what we can expect. While we are doing this, we can answer the question: “Is it worth the upgrade?”
In this blog post, I will highlight the new features and enhancements included in Update 4 that relate only to the Service Provider community. There are other great features that can be used by the Service Providers, but will not be discussed in this blog post. They will be discussed in more detail on a future blog post. With that let’s get started:
No.1 – DRaaS with VMware vCloud Director Integration
The integration with vCD (VMware vCloud Director) is not something new with Veeam; but on this version, Veeam raises the bar of the integration with vCD. Now, Service Providers can use Tenants vCD resources to offer DRaaS. That can be done by exposing the tenant vCD resources to Veeam Cloud Connect to be consumed by a tenant replication job, instead of creating a separate tenant and associating it with Veeam Hardware Plans. That way, Service Providers do not have to manage two different environments to provide DRaaS services. On the screenshot below, you can see how a Service Provider can expose the vCD Tenant to Veeam Cloud Connect:
After choosing the Tenant type (vCD), the Service Provider can select the vCD Organization, and then enable the desired cloud services; for example, BaaS or/and DRaaS.
After the cloud service is configured, the Tenant can connect to the Service Provider using the correct vCD username and password credentials.
A replication job can be created to run in the vCD tenancy. This feature is ideal for DR scenarios, and can also be used for migration of the on-premises workload to a Service Provider’s cloud based on vCD; see the screenshot below.
No. 2 – Veeam Gateway Pools
This feature is great news for many Service Providers. It offers Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) for internal and external users and tenants. Those Service Providers or Enterprises using Veeam Cloud Connect can set up a pool of gateways and then associate a Tenant with the pool. Service Providers or Enterprises can ensure the appropriate Veeam Gateway will be used for each Tenant. For example, Service Providers can create a pool of gateways for each city, for example, and then associate the customers from each city or region to the closest Gateway pool. Internal tenants can also be associated with different Gateway pools to those accessed by the external tenants. There are other association possibilities available, and these depend upon the design architecture.
The Veeam Cloud Connect configuration of the Gateway Pools is a very simple process and can accomplished using the Veeam Console; see the screenshot below:
Now you are asking yourself “What will happen if all the Gateways inside the pool fail?”. If this happens, Veeam has implemented a fail-safe mechanism where Service Providers can allow the Tenant to connect to other Gateway Pools by enabling the checkbox of “Failover to other cloud gateways if all gateways from the selected pool are unavailable”. See the checkbox right at the bottom of the screenshot below:
No. 3 – Tenant to Tape Jobs
The third feature introduced in Update 4 is “Tenant to Tape” backup jobs based on GFS Job. With this feature, Service Providers can schedule a copy job to backup the tenant’s backup for storage on tapes for cheap and long term retention. To accomplish this task, Service Providers must add a Tape Server to the Cloud Connect infrastructure, as is normally done with Veeam Backup and Replication. After the Tape Server has been configured, the Service Providers can begin backing up the Tenants backups and data to tape. See the screenshot below:
No. 4 – Tenant Driven Password Change
Before the Tenants are introduced to Update 4, Service Providers must create and assign a password to each Tenant. The password is delivered by email or phone. With the new Update 4, the Tenant can change their password after the initial connection to the Service Provider. To change the password, the tenant must edit the Service Provider’s connection after providing the password received from the Service Provider. This is merely an extra precaution:
Summary
As I said at the top of this blog post, there are many other features included in Update 4, and as I have learned by working with the Service Provider community for some time now, these new features are very important and will be welcomed by many. The general release of Update 4 will be at the end of January 2019. For now, to experience these new Update 4 features, you can download them from the Veeam forum, or contact your local Veeam SE team. See you next post.
