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Opinions on VRO Platform Support

MicoolPaul
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Hi everyone,

 

I’m not going to try and frame this as some dramatic, doomsday story for either VMware or VRO, but acknowledge the current market conditions.

Backdrop for discussion

We are all hearing stories of people abandoning VMware due to pricing concerns etc, and the increase in market fragmentation. Organisations scattering across jumping to Microsoft Hyper-V/Azure Stack, organisations embracing the cloud such as hyperscalers, organisations embracing OpenShift, Proxmox, KVM, XenServer etc.

 

Source VM Workloads

Now, we know that today Veeam supports Agent backups and vSphere backups as the source for a VRO recovery plan. Overall, this means that we don’t need to worry too much about backup source support because if it’s not vSphere, the source can be protected in-guest with an agent for now.

 

Destination Compute Location

This is where the core of this post comes in. Currently VRO supports restoring to vSphere or Azure. So if an organisation moves away from VMware, the only recovery location they can leverage is Azure currently, which could impact their ability to recover.

 

I’m not necessarily after an official response from Veeam here as to where this product will go and which hypervisors will be supported in the longer term, because I’m sure they’ll make any announcements and I’m confident that many discussions are taking place around this. But I ask you in the community, where would you like to see Veeam go next with this product?

From my perspective, Hyper-V is the next most mature product, and has ultimately worked for a long time with strong commitment of resources from Microsoft, whilst for cloud compute AWS will make sense for diversity of cloud platforms. What about you? Are you seeing a particular hypervisor getting a lot of demand, that Veeam have stated interest or support for? What do you want to see from Veeam for VRO?

Michael Paul - #VeeamLegend | #VeeamVanguard | Veeam Certified Architect | VMware vExpert | https://micoolpaul.com | Twitter: @MicoolPaul | Mastodon: @micoolpaul@masto.nu | Bluesky: @micoolpaul.bsky.social

9 comments

coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Ah..ok. I haven’t delve too much into VRO so wasn’t aware of this limitation. Good to know Michael. 

Like you, it just makes sense to go with HV. It’s the most maturest of the remaining hypervisors out there imo. Not sure what Veeam’s thoughts on this will be.

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
S
Userlevel 1

I feel that VRO should have supported Hyper-V from day 1. I also understand why it didnt as the tricky part it whether customers have SCVMM deployed as that central point in to the environment in the same way the vCentre is the target for VMware environments.

 

Would love to see VRO fully support Hyper-V/SCVMM in the future. (Even if that means SCVMM is a prerequisite)

E
Userlevel 3

I’m in that boat as well, but avoiding Microsoft because they haven’t done anything with Hyper-V for years, and they have a bad habit of pulling a product’s support just as people have invested in it.  I asked about Veeam’s roadmap regarding products like Proxmox, and was roughly told that they are content staying with VMware and rolling with the punches.  And posts showed that alternatives like Proxmox are in the extremely early stages of evaluating (like they just downloaded the product and hadn’t yet done an implementation.)

Like a lot of people rested their careers on VMware, it sounds like Veeam's business model largely rests on VMware as well.  If I were Veeam, I’d be very uncomfortable, and certainly not believing that it’s going to be business-as-usual going forward.

And how that all comes around to VRO - I’m still trying to get this monster tamed and implemented.  It required WAY more time than I had allocated since it’s just me doing this along with wearing 50 other hats.  Knowing that we are very likely going to move away from VMware within a couple of years, how much more time do I want to spend in implementing VRO with that short reward cycle?  Sadly, I’m looking at other options because it’s just too complicated and time-consuming to get off the ground, and doesn’t look like it will address our needs post-VMware.

Chris.Childerhose
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

I agree that Hyper-v should be the next logical place to be able to recover and also would like to see Nutanix maybe as well?  I think it is more mature than some of the other hypervisors and works with Veeam.  Maybe it won't be possible but something I hope is looked at.  I don't use Nutanix personally but know many that do.

Chris Childerhose - VMCA2022 | VMCE2023 | Veeam Vanguard 7* | Veeam Legend 3* | vExpert 5* | VCAP-DCV/VCP-DCV | Object First Ace | Cisco Champion | Twitter: @cchilderhose | Blog Site – https://just-virtualization.tech
skitch210
Userlevel 5
Badge +1

So on this topic, Azure Stack is an Azure location and I feel that is MS forward for Hyper-V platform future anyway. Looking at support and long time Veeam integration, AHV I feel would be the next option. As a recovery location and can automate the testing and failover of their native built in replication, which is similar to a storage based replication integration. 

 

And as always, there is the option currently to use the Custom steps with Powershell scripts :)

jdtrier
Userlevel 4
Badge

I second that integration potential with AHV and Nutanix, you are seeing alot of partners shift their expertise on to that platform in the recent months. We need companies like Nutanix to start expanding development to support more integration with other products. Not to say there isn’t development to be done on the Veeam side as well. 

 

This post is a great call out and hoping we will broaden approach for the platform.

 

JTR
MicoolPaul
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

@EdFromOhio hopefully you’ve seen Veeam’s stance shift on this then: https://forums.veeam.com/ovirt-kvm-f62/feature-request-proxmox-t71691-120.html?hilit=Proxmox#top at least we’ve got written communication it’s being evaluated! 🙂 I haven’t used Proxmox yet but I personally am in the camp of Hyper-V because Xbox and Azure and a chunk of M365 services sit on this so it’s too big for Microsoft to bin, though I agree completely that Hyper-V has been gathering dust until their announced windows server 2025 changes!

 

Keep the feedback coming people I find it interesting to see where people are looking at shifting to and maybe someone at Veeam will even find this useful for decision making!

Michael Paul - #VeeamLegend | #VeeamVanguard | Veeam Certified Architect | VMware vExpert | https://micoolpaul.com | Twitter: @MicoolPaul | Mastodon: @micoolpaul@masto.nu | Bluesky: @micoolpaul.bsky.social
dips
Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Personally, Hyper-V as well.

Following on from Broadcom’s acquisition and constant news on what they are planning with VMware, it feels that the next logical step for an organisation who have invested heavily into Azure and 365, Hyper-V becomes a logical step to migrate to. 

Especially with the announcements coming out of Microsoft and Windows Server 2025. If they offer a smooth migration path away from VMware, and organisations start dipping their toes into Hyper-V, there is a huge opportunity for Microsoft to take customers away from VMware.

Dipen N. K. | IT Security Specialist | Veeam Legend 2022 - 2023 | www.dipen.co.uk
wesmrt
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

For me it’s definitely need to suport Hyper-V as a source and AWS as destination in future releases.

Wesley Martins @ Specialist Enginner at Veeam Technical Support | My blog: https://itproland.com.br (PT-BR)

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