VMware Backup:

Veeam Backup & Replication vs. Quest vRanger Top 10 Reasons to Choose Veeam

Veeam Backup & Replication isnt the only way to back up your virtual environment but it is the best way.

While other tools provide image-level backup of virtual machines (VMs), only Veeam fully leverages the virtual environment to reduce the cost and increase the value of backupnot just a little, but a lot. As a result, Veeam provides fundamental and far-reaching advantages over other VMware backup tools. Table 1 summarizes the top 10 advantages over Quest vRanger according to Veeam customers and partners.

Elevating the discussion

Veeam Backup & Replication and vRanger both offer features you would expect in any backup tool, such as expedited backup processing and data reduction to minimize backup storage requirements. For example, Veeam provides inline source-side deduplication to minimize backup time as well as storage consumption. When it comes to this aspect of your evaluation, we recommend that you test it for yourself in your own environment and with your own VMs. And when deciding which tool to test, consider where your choice will take you. Will it be business as usual? Or is there an opportunity to take data protection to a new level with unique functionality that has never been possible before?

We tried for several months to get a competing product to work, investing a lot of time and money in the process. That product brought our system to a crawl, and backups failed 75% of the time. Our environment is almost 100% virtualized, so we need a backup system we can rely on. We switched to Veeam Backup, and we're very happy with it. Nothing else in the virtualization space offers comparable functionality and reliability. Kim Byram Director, Business and Information Systems ISCO Industries, LLC

Rethinking data protection

Virtualization opens up all sorts of new possibilities for data protection. Hot backups, recovery on any host, and one-step recovery of an entire system (OS, applications and data) are just a few examples. But this is just the beginning. Virtualization also makes it possible to cost effectively replicate applications and data for the best possible recovery point objective (RPO). And by streamlining incremental backups, VMware makes it possible to back up more frequently, also improving RPOs. But even this is just the beginning. Virtualization also makes it possible to verify the recoverability of every backup and restore individual objects from any applicationthings that are impossible to do with traditional backup. Because there was no viable solution, organizations had no choice but to accept these risks and limitations. But with virtualization and Veeam, theres finally a solution.

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An elegant solution
Veeams solution is actually quite simple: Since its easy to create a VM on the fly, what if you could start up a VM from a disk-based backup (in an isolated environment, of course) and verify that everything runs correctly? Or retrieve lost emails, database records or other application items from it? It sounds simple enoughit is easy to create VMs, and its relatively straightforward to configure an isolated virtual network. But what about the time it takes to provision storage and extract the backup? And what happens if the VM running from the backup interferes with the VM running in production? This is where Veeam takes a deceptively simple concept and turns it into a powerful new reality. With new patent-pending vPower technology, Veeam makes it possible to run a VM directly from a compressed and deduplicated backup file. Theres no need to provision storage or extract the backupyou simply run the VM directly from the backup file on regular backup storage, but without making any changes to the backup file itself. This new vPower technology also creates and manages isolated virtual labs where backup VMs can run without risk of interfering with the production environment. So you can automatically test and verify the recoverability of backups and instantly retrieve individual application items. And when you need to recover a VM in the production environment, you can do that, too. Just run the VM from the backup to restore service to users in less than a minute. Instant VM recovery, application-item recovery and recovery verification are just a few examples of how Veeam leverages virtualization and Veeam innovation to change what you should expectand what IT stakeholders and regulators will ultimately demandfrom backup.

#1 VMware backup
By focusing on VMware backup, Veeam has quickly established itself as the leader in this space. Veeam Backup & Replication has a long history of industry firsts and typically provides new platform support months before other backup vendors. For example, Veeam was the first to support vSphere Changed Block Tracking (CBT) with the release of Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0 in October 2009. vRanger did not support CBT until the release of vRanger 4.5 in late May 20107 months later. But while Veeam is quick to support new VMware features and aggressive in advancing the state-of-the-art, were careful to provide backward compatibility. For example, while we encourage new customers to use the vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP), we still support existing customers using VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). In contrast, Quest dropped support for VCBeven after assuring customers many times that it would continue to support VCB. This created issues for vRanger customers who had not yet completed their own internal certification of VADP for production use. Quest has dropped other features as well, such as P2V (physical-to-virtual) backup, as they struggled to get out new product releases. New versions of Veeam Backup & Replication also allow recovery from backups created with previous versions (either with the latest release of Veeam Backup & Replication, or with a standalone utility program that can be archived to tape with every backup). This is not necessarily the case with vRangerfor example, when vRanger 4.0 came out, it could not restore backups created with vRanger 3. This capability was only added much later, under great pressure from existing customers.

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History shows that Quest (formerly Vizioncore) has a track record of over promising and under delivering and has slipped new product releases by 2 years or more. According to vRanger customers, every imaginable feature would be promised for next quarter, but with no commitment to specific dates or inclusion in purchase contracts.

About this comparison

This comparison was created at the request of Veeam customers and prospects to help them evaluate their options for VMware backup. It compares Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 Enterprise Edition to Quest vRanger Pro 5.0. Although vRanger Pro 5.0 is not yet available (despite Quests announcement at VMworld Copenhagen that All vRanger 5 editions will be available through Quest authorized resellers starting in late November 2010), its what Quest is currently pitching, so we thought it would be most helpful to provide a comparison to it. While every attempt has been made to provide an accurate comparison, please recognize that Veeams access to information about competing products is limited. To the best of our knowledge, the information is correct as of the date of publication. We would appreciate your feedback. If you see something here thats different from what you know or have experienced with vRanger, please let us know. Veeam Backup & Replication v5 Enterprise Edition 1. Instant VM recovery 2. Exchange item-level recovery 3. Universal application-item recovery 4. File-level recovery 5. Recovery verification 6. Centralized management 7. Synthetic full backup 8. Deduplication 9. Application-aware processing 10. Total cost of ownership (TCO)

Quest vRanger Pro 5.0

Any file system

Extra cost, separate product

Windows and Linux only

Low

High

Table 1. Veeam Backup & Replication provides numerous advantages over Quest vRanger.

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Instant VM recovery
Veeam Backup & Replication v5 introduced new vPower technology that lets you run a VM directly from a compressed and deduplicated backup file on regular backup storage. This patentpending, groundbreaking technology eliminates the need to extract the backup and copy it to production storageyou simply start the VM from the backup. So if a VM goes down, you can restart it on any host in a matter of minutes. In fact, in an independent lab test commissioned by Veeam, it took just 36 seconds to restart a Microsoft Exchange server from a backup file and publish it on the production network. Instant VM recovery is like a temporary spare for your VMs. To complete the recovery, use Storage vMotion to migrate the VM to production storage with no interruption in service or impact on users. Or, if you dont have Storage vMotion, simply replicate or hot copy the VM to production storageVeeam Backup & Replication also includes these capabilities.

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Exchange item-level recovery

Granular recoverythe ability to recover individual emails, directory objects or database recordsis a common recovery scenario. Some would argue that its the most common recovery scenario. And with heavy reliance on corporate email, its one of the most common requests for Exchange recovery. Veeam Backup & Replication v5 introduced new item-level recovery for Exchange. Unlike traditional approaches that require special agents, indexes, backups or recovery tools, Veeam lets you perform item-level recovery from a regular image-level backup using built-in tools. Using new patent-pending vPower technology, you simply run Exchange from a backup file and retrieve the items you need using native Exchange management tools or a Veeam-provided wizard. vRanger does not perform Exchange item-level recovery and instead requires an additional Quest product (to license, learn, deploy and maintain). This product, Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange, is licensed on a per-mailbox basis. After many years in the Quest product portfolio, Recovery Manager for Exchange and vRanger were recently integrated (primarily from a sales and commercial packaging perspective). In order to recover an Exchange object from a vRanger image-level backup, you must first provision storage and extract the EDB and LOG files from the backup using vRanger file-level recovery. Then you can point Recovery Manager for Exchange at the EDB and LOG files. According to Quests own metric for vRanger file-level recovery, extracting these files from a typical Exchange server with 200 mailboxes takes up to 8 hours (comparable to full VM recovery). Not only does Veeam Backup & Replication provide Exchange item-level recovery by itself, it does so using only Microsoft-supported APIs. It does not reverse engineer the Exchange data schema or semantics in order to extract or modify Exchange data. Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange reportedly does this, which can void Microsoft support agreements. (For example, see Microsoft KB article 904845.)

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Universal application-item recovery

With Veeam, granular application-item recovery is not limited to Exchange. Veeam Backup & Replication provides recovery of individual objects from any virtualized application, on any OS. For example, you can recover individual rows or tables from an Oracle database running on Solaris, or you can recover individual customer records from a Unix-based CRM system. We call it U-AIR, or universal application-item recovery. Its a brand-new, patent-pending solution to the age-old problem of what to do when users accidentally delete important data or scripts incorrectly update records. U-AIR addresses the limitations of existing object-level recovery methods. U-AIR is: Inexpensive: Doesnt require additional agents, backups or software tools. Universal: Works with any virtualized application and the applications native management tools and permissions. Durable: Not tied to application internals so is easy to maintain and works seamlessly with new application patches and releases.

U-AIR is exclusive to Veeam and is enabled through Veeams patent-pending vPower technology. vRanger does not have anything comparable. (Quest does have products in its portfolio for granular Active Directory and SQL Server recovery, but they are not part of any vRanger offering, would presumably have similar shortcomings as described above for Recovery Manager for Exchange, and would only provide very limited application coverage.)

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File-level recovery
Unlike traditional file-based backups, image-level backups allow for quick recovery of an entire VM on any host, without having to rebuild the system from scratch. But recovery of individual guest files can be a challenge. From the very beginning, Veeam has provided file-level recovery from image-level backups. In fact, Veeam invented instant file-level recovery (IFLR), first available for Windows and then for Linux, Unix and Mac file systems using patent-pending Veeam technology based on an IFLR helper appliance. With support for 15 different file systems, Veeam already held a substantial lead over other backup tools. And with new patent-pending vPower technology, Veeam pulls further ahead, with the ability to restore individual files from a regular image-level backup (or replica) in seconds to the latest state or any point in time, on any OS and file system. vRanger provides file-level recovery for Windows, and the new 5.0 Pro version will reportedly add support for Linux. It is not clear how this will be accomplished or which Linux file systems will be supported. In addition, Unix and other OSs (Apple Mac, Novell Netware, etc.) will still not be supported.

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Recovery verification
Even if a backup job completes successfully and the backup file passes its integrity check, you might not be able to recover from the backup. The system youre backing up may be in an unbootable statefor example, a critical configuration file may have been deleted or corrupted, there may be update or reconfiguration tasks pending reboot, or a hot backup may have captured the system or application data in an inconsistent state.

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The only way to be sure that you can recover from a backup is to do a test restore. All the backup vendors know this. For example, Quest says in its blog, we recommend that organizations perform quarterly and monthly DR testing, to ensure that their backup copies are valid and recoverable. However, most organizations do not have the resources to perform quarterlylet alone monthlytesting of a backup of each VM. And even monthly testing could leave you with 30 days of bad backups and way out of compliance with service-level agreements. But new vPower technology allows you to verify the recoverability of your backupsnot just a few selected backups, but every backup, of every virtual machine, every time. Its simply not possible in the physical world or with other virtualization-enabled backup tools. This new patent-pending technology automates the recovery verification process, using available resources in the existing production or test environment and without affecting your backup window. During recovery verification, vPower creates a VM in an isolated environment and runs it directly from the backup file. It starts the VM, boots the OS and confirms that applications inside the VM are running normally. You no longer have to settle for backups that might work or should work instead, you can rest easy knowing that your backups actually do work. (back)

Centralized management
Veeam Backup & Replication accommodates your particular environment with the ability to deploy any number of backup servers. Perhaps you need multiple backup servers for scalabilitythat is, to back up and restore many VMs. Or you need multiple backup servers to maintain security, organizational or other boundaries. Of course, in order to deploy multiple backup servers, you need to be able to manage multiple backup servers. Veeam provides Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager for this very purpose. Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager provides a web-based console for backup and recovery activities such as search and job control, as well as consolidated monitoring, alerting and reporting across backup servers. It is included with Veeam Backup & Replication at no additional charge. vRanger does not include any kind of centralized management. If you need to deploy multiple vRanger backup serversfor scalability reasons (for example, if backing up many VMs on ESXi hosts) or to accommodate organizational boundaries (for example, limiting IT administrator access to a particular business units VMs), you have no enterprise-wide view of backup status or recovery operations.

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Synthetic full backup

Synthetic full backup eliminates the need for periodic full backups by creating new full backups from incremental backups. This forever incremental approach to backup is both proven and desirable because it reduces load on the production environment. In fact, synthetic full backup is the only way to protect very large VMs that would otherwise take the better part of a dayor even longerto back up (even with the fastest and most efficient backup tool). Likewise, synthetic full backups are essential when backing up offsite over a WAN. Thus, for these common scenarios, synthetic full is a must-have capability.

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Synthetic backup can also reduce backup storage requirements by 60 percent or more. For example, lets say you have a 100GB VM and your organizations policy requires you to keep 30 days of backups on disk. Assuming 5 percent of the data changes daily, if you were to take weekly full backups and daily incrementals, you would need 655GB of backup storage. But with a single synthetic full backup, you need only 250GB of backup storagea savings of 62 percent. Synthetic fulls also reduce network traffic. For example, in the scenario above, synthetic full backup can reduce network traffic by 62 percent. And with automated recovery verification, you dont need to worry about a synthetic full getting corrupted over time. While Veeam offers a choice of synthetic and traditional full backups, vRanger only supports traditional full backups. Thus, vRanger customers do not have the opportunity to take advantage of the many benefits of synthetic full backup. (back)

Deduplication
With the volume of data growing every day and storage being one of the most expensive IT assets, deduplication is an essential capability for any backup tool. VMware backup is unique in that it is done at the image level. Because many VMs have the same operating system and/or applications installed, traditional backup tools end up reading, transferring and storing the same data over and over again. Veeams answer to this is inline source-side, block-level deduplication. This functionality typically results in a 10x reduction in backup time, network traffic and backup storage consumption. Veeam has provided deduplication since version 1in fact, Veeam was the first vendor to implement deduplication in a VMware backup product. In addition, Veeam does not charge extra for deduplication. vRanger still does not offer this extremely important capabilitynot even as a chargeable addondespite promising it for years. While network traffic and backup performance might not be a concern for some organizations (as long as backups can complete in the available window), the 10x larger storage requirement is a big issue that directly and negatively affects vRangers TCO (total cost of ownership). (back)

Application-aware processing
Application-aware processing is unique Veeam technology that creates image-level backups in a fully application-aware manner. Application-aware processing is a multi-step process that includes: 1. Detecting applications running inside the VM to be backed up or replicated. 2. Setting up an application-specific restore procedure for each application before capturing the VM image. The procedure configures the application to perform a restore from a Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshot when the VM is first booted after being restored from the backup file. As per vendor specifications, VSS restore requirements and steps differ from application to application. 3. Using VSS to notify applications that a backup is about to be taken. This ensures that the VMware snapshot captures the VM image with each application in a transactionally consistent state. 4. Pruning transaction logsbut only after successful completion of the backup job. The whole process is fully automated and transparent to the backup administrator.

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vRanger is not application-aware, and only implements application-agnostic VSS integration. vRangers VSS integration simply instructs VSS to perform application-level quiescence, which is already available natively from VMware Tools VSS. For some applications (such as Exchange), vRangers VSS integration also prunes logs. However, log pruning does not comply with Microsoft requirements because it is performed immediately after the snapshot is taken, but before the backup finishes successfully. So if the backup fails (which vRanger customers report is fairly common), you have neither a backup to restore from nor transaction logs to replay. In addition to being completely useless (and potentially harmful), vRangers implementation of VSS integration is unmanageable. You must manually deploy the integration component in each VM, create scripts and place everything in a special folder (the location of which varies from OS to OS). This process must be repeated for each new VM added to the environment. Scripts must also be updated if you add new virtual disks to a VM. Veeam, on the other hand, does not require any manual configuration, deployment or updating of components on VMs. Instead, Veeam automatically deploys a small runtime coordination process to the VM when the backup starts (no direct network connection to the backup server is required), and removes it immediately after the backup finishes. This frees you from having to micro-manage (deploy, configure, update, monitor, troubleshoot, etc.) agents and other software on VMs. (back)

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Total cost of ownership

Veeam offers low total cost of ownership (TCO). For example, customers report that Veeam Backup & Replication is easy to use and maintain. Backup and recovery operations are easy to understand and execute, and backups run reliablytheres no need to babysit backup jobs. And there are no agents to monitor or maintain. In addition, Veeam provides significant return on investment (ROI). By offloading backup processing from production hosts, Veeam lets you maximize server consolidation for greater cost savings. And with built-in deduplication, compression, whitespace removal and support for synthetic full backups, Veeam reduces the amount of network bandwidth and storage needed for backups. Interested in knowing what you could save? Contact a Veeam representative for a free ROI analysis. (back)

Summary
Virtualization offers the opportunity to significantly enhance data protection and reduce costs, but you need the right tool to turn the opportunity into reality. Already, Veeam has made enhanced data protection a reality for more than 15,000 customers. And with new vPower technology, Veeam is taking backup to a whole new level and using virtualization to do things never before possible. For more information about how Veeam Backup & Replication can provide you with better backup and big cost savings, contact a Veeam representative today.
12162010 r2 Copyright 2010 Veeam Software. All rights reserved. Publication or distribution of this document, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from Veeam is prohibited.

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