I know that a lot of new features will be implemented and possible to use in the next major release of Veeam Backup & Replication, but we may not forget that are already a lot of features in the current and previous versions of the Veeam flagship!
In this post I just want to hightlight some powerful features in Veeam Backup & Replication.
Those features are in my opinion a bit unterrated and hidden, but I use them often in my job as being a backup engineer, consultant and architect.
- Quick Backup
What does it do :
It lets you perform an on-demand incremental backup for one or more VMs.
I just takes an extra restore point for the selected VM.
When to use :
I use this often when I will make drastic changes on a VM like upgrading the application running in the VM, installing Windows updates or/and other updates in this VM, ...
Often people take a snapshot before - I uses instead mostly a Veeam Quick Backup.
Why? In this way I can never forget to delete the taken snapshot which is not recommended to forget…and this unfortunately happens too often in production.
More info :
Quick Backup - User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com)
- Quick Migration
What does it do :
It allows you to migrate VMs or virtual disks between ESXi hosts (or Hyper-V hosts) and datastores.
It can be used as a self-contained capability or as a way to finalize the instant recovery and instant disk recovery processes.
When to use :
I use this sometimes to migrate VMs between an old ESXi host and a new ESXi host without having a vCenter appliance and storage vmotion license.
It’s the perfect way to migrate those VMs with this built-in proprietary technology of Veeam.
More info :
Quick Migration - User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com)
Quick Migration - User Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V (veeam.com)
- VeeamZIP
What does it do :
With this feature you can create an ad-hoc independent backup for one or more VMs that or running or being powered off.
When to use :
I use this always when I need to delete/decommission a certain VM. I always first take an independent backup using VeeamZIP to archive this backup separately before deleting the VM and job if needed.
It saved me already multiple times, because the customer asks some weeks or months later that there was still something on that particular VM that has not being migrated to the new VM...
More info :
VeeamZIP - User Guide for VMware vSphere
- Export
What does it do :
This feature allows you to synthesize a complete and independent full backup file out of selected restore points that are located already on your backup repositories.
When to use :
I use this feature sometimes when a third party needs to have a full independent backup file of a certain existing restore point of a certain VM, often needed for security or audit reasons : in case of ransomware is an example.
Also it can be used when someone has already deleted a certain VM and we want to archive this backup. We normally use VeeamZIP for that, but that is not being possible anymore because the VM is not existing anymore. With the export-feature we can create a new independent backup file from this existing backup-chain.
More info :
Exporting Backups - User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com)
I definitely hope those features will never dissapear in future releases.
