Veeam Backup and Replication 9.5 what's new

Veeam released the version 9.5 of its Backup and Replication solution introducing some new features and full support to Microsoft 2016 Data Center Technologies.

Despite release 9.5 doesn't support vSphere 6.5 yet, the new functions are extremely interesting and improve the overall performance of the product.

What's new

In version 9.5 plenty of new features have been introduced.

VMware vSphere infrastructure cache

The interaction between Veeam and vCenter has been dramatically improved with the new Veeam Broker Service that collects and caches vSphere infrastructure hierarchy in RAM for access at memory speed.

Jobs will fetch the vSphere topology directly from RAM cache instead of querying the vCenter accelerating job startup.

Advanced data fetcher

This feature reduces the load on primary storage due to the reduced number of I/O operations required to complete a backup, improving its availability to production workloads.

Advanced ReFS integration for Windows 2016

ReFS is the Microsoft file system introduced with Windows 2012 as next generation of file system after NTFS. Maybe the most interesting feature introduced, it brings as main benefits faster synthetic full backups creation and transformation performance, as well as reduced storage requirements and improved reliability.

Advanced ReFS integration requires a Windows Server 2016-based backup repository backed by a local volume or shared folder.

Direct restore from tape

Previously restores from tape required to stage VM backup files in a repository first before restoring the VM in the final datastore.

Now administrators can perform a full VM restore directly from tape to final datastore improving the RTO and eliminating the need of locating a repository with sufficient, free disk space to accommodate all of the backup files required to perform the restore.

Veeam Cloud Connect

• Parallel processing - tenants can now backup or replicate multiple VMs and disks in parallel improving job performance and applies to direct transport mode only.
• Replication from backup in a cloud repository - tenants can now perform replication from a backup residing in a cloud repository.
• Configuration backup to cloud repository - added support for performing configuration backups to a cloud repository, except for those backed by a scale-out repository.

Proxy Affinity

Proxy affinity allows to control assignment of resources in the backup infrastructure enabling the administrators to specify backup proxies which are allowed to perform backups to and restores from the chosen repository.

Proxy affinity rules are not applied for replication jobs.

Scale-out Backup Repository temporary expansion

In 9.0 Enterprise edition you’re able to create one Scale-out Backup Repository with a maximum of three extents.

In version 9.5 Enterprise edition users are now allowed to add a fourth extent, even though no more than three extents can be online at the same time, with the fourth remaining in maintenance mode.

Nimble Storage integration

In addition to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), NetApp and Dell EMC, Veeam extends its direct Storage Snapshot support to Nimble Storage.

Direct restore to Microsoft Azure

With version 9.5 it's now possible to restore computers from any Veeam product to Azure. With this feature administrators can:

• Quickly restore Windows and Linux VMs, physical servers or endpoints to Azure
• Execute planned workload migrations from on-site to the cloud
• Create an Azure-based test environment for testing backup reliability

Since the release of VMware vSphere 6.5 occurred almost at the same time of Veeam 9.5, full support for vSphere 6.5 will be delivered as a part of Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 1.