Now that VMware vSphere 4 has been officially announced, it’s time to start talking about the new solutions that it will bring to the table. One solution that integrates with vSphere 4 is a handy little gem called VMware Data Recovery. The solution is designed for small to medium businesses, and can be used to backup virtual machines that are managed via ESX Servers or vCenter Servers. It’s compatible with vSphere 4 virtualization features like HA, DRS, VMotion, Storage VMotion, so regardless of where the virtual machines are migrated to, VMware Data Recovery will be able to locate them and back them up.
The Data Recovery solution comes in the form of a VMware Virtual Appliance (.OVF format). The appliance is securely managed with a vSphere Client plug-in that provides the interface to configure the backup and restore jobs. The solution allows for the creation of the following job properties:
- Virtual Machines to Backup
- Backup Destinations
- Backup Job Window
- Retention Policies
The VMware Data Recovery is an Agent-less disk based backup and recovery solution that can perform virtual machine or file level restores of Windows or Linux guess OS’s. It performs incremental backups plus data de-duplication and compression to save disk space. Data Recovery supports any disks that are accessible by the Data Recovery appliance. The disks could be in a VMFS volume or on shared disks such as NFS, DAS, iSCSI, Fiber, SMB\CIFS Shares.
All of this makes the solution very appealing for small to medium businesses, since they can now use cheaper storage solutions for the backup of virtual machines. Affordable NAS devices like, DroboPro, Thecus 7700N, etc, can be used for reliable backup devices. This product is not compatible with ESX/ESXi 3.x or vCenter 2.5 and older.
Unlike VMware Consolidated Backup, which was a CLI or modular driven solution, this new solution is completely wizard driven, which makes it very easy to manage. Take a look at the demonstration below, and see how elegantly this solution works. You can also visit VMware’s Data Recovery page for more detailed information on this new solution.
This is just one of the many gifts that vSphere 4 undoubtedly has to offer. It looks like Santa has come early – over the next few months we’re going to have a lot of unwrapping to do.
VMware Data Recovery
April 27th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Perfect! So would I get this becuase I’m on subscription?
now all i need is a antivirus.
April 27th, 2009 at 7:55 am
Jonathan, you should look and see if there is a solution with VMsafe available from Symantec or McAfee. I’ll see what I can find out for you in the event that there is something available now that vSphere is available.
April 27th, 2009 at 8:17 am
Jonathan, I forgot to mention one thing… you have to upgrade to vSphere in order to use VCDR and VMsafe solutions, so get to it.
April 28th, 2009 at 8:04 am
when are you going to send me the new product haha. when does it come out anyways?
June 6th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
[...] Rivera – New Virtual Machine Data Recovery SolutionThe VMware Data Recovery is an Agent-less disk based backup and recovery solution that can perform [...]
June 6th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
[...] Rivera – New Virtual Machine Data Recovery SolutionThe VMware Data Recovery is an Agent-less disk based backup and recovery solution that can perform [...]