Initially when I heard about the latest product release and the addition of an Enterprise version of the software, I’ll admit, I was none too excited. Reason being, I have always felt Veeam Backup & Recovery was a great 2-in-1 Backup solution that provided inexpensive DR for organizations that have tight IT budgets. I was concerned that by adding a new level of the product it would be hard to see the value in the uplift.

I would like to go on the record of being completely wrong and surprised! I was able to get briefed on the latest features of Veeam Backup & Replication and see it an action this past week and I was simply blown away. Now I know why Veeam won the Best in Show award at VMworld this year.

Veeam Backup & Replication with their Sure Backup technology is ready for the Enterprise. Veeam has not gotten away from their core technology of simple, reliable Virtual Machine Backup. But they have added a bunch of functionality that has Veeam differentiating themselves from all other VMware specific backup players but also the big name backup technologies.

So what’s baked into 5.0? Current Veeam Backup & Recovery users will find a significant portion of what made previous versions so great. New in version 5 you’ll find the following:

1. Instant VM Recovery: Restore an entire virtual machine from a backup file in minutes. Users remain productive while IT troubleshoots the issue.
2. U-AIR™ (Universal Application-Item Recovery): Recover individual items from any virtualized application, on any operating system, without additional backups, agents or software tools. Eliminates the need for expensive special-purpose tools and extends granular recovery to all applications and users.
3. SureBackup™ Recovery Verification: Automatically verify the recoverability of every backup, of every virtual machine, every time. Eliminates uncertainty and sets a new standard in data protection.
4. On-demand Sandbox: Create test VMs from any point in time to troubleshoot problems or test workarounds, software patches and new application code. Eliminates the need for dedicated test labs and the overhead that extra VMware snapshots place on VMs.
5. Instant File-level Recovery for any file system: Recover an entire VM or an individual file from the same image-level backup. Extends instant file-level recovery to all VMs.

Below is a video of Sure Backup in Action: