VMware Backup Software - VMware ESXi & vSphere

Key Features at a Glance

Back up live VMware VMs and all application data
Automate VM protection with VMware backup policies
Instantly recover entire VMs, files, and application objects directly from deduplicated backups
Copy VM backups offsite or to Amazon/Azure clouds
Test backups instantly and automatically

Orchestrate and automate site recovery in a few clicks
Save storage space with global deduplication and swap exclusion
Boost VM backup speed with LAN-free data transfer and Network Acceleration
Deploy in 1 minute as a VA, or install on Windows or Linux
Create a backup appliance by installing on a NAS

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Key Benefits
Key Features in Detail
VMware Backup Best Practices

Protect VMware VMs and All Application Data

Image-Based Backup

NAKIVO Backup & Replication performs image-based backup of VMware VMs. This means that the entire VM is captured during backup, including all disks and configuration files. Everything is available and ready for recovery.

Incremental

All VM backup jobs use VMware Changed Block Tracking (CBT) to quickly identify changed data. Only those changes (increments) are copied to the backup repository, which results in faster backups.

Application-Aware Backup

By default, backup of a VMware virtual machine is performed using the application-aware mode. This ensures that data in applications such as Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, SQL, and SharePoint, is transactionally consistent.

Long-Term Backup Archival

NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows you to save up to 4,000 recovery points per VM, rotating them using the GFS retention policy. This provides for longer data retention periods and smarter storage space consumption.

Automate VMware Backup to Save Time & Resources

NAKIVO Backup & Replication eliminates the need to track every change in your infrastructure and manually manage basic data protection tasks. To allow for automated backup for VMware, the virtual solution allows you to set up rule-based policies for your VMware backup jobs. Once a policy is created, the product can regularly scan your entire infrastructure and automatically add new VMs that match the policy rules to the relevant VMware backup jobs. You can create your policy rules based on VM name, tag, size, location, power state, configuration, etc.

You can also create VMware backup jobs for VMware containers, such as VM folders, resource pools, ESXi hosts, and VMware ESXi clusters. All new VMs added to a protected container are automatically included in the scope of the container’s existing backup jobs.

With the HTTP API, you can integrate NAKIVO Backup & Replication with monitoring, automation, and orchestration solutions to reduce time spent on data protection management as well as cutting data protection costs.

Increase VMware Backup Speed

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is designed to deliver the fastest performance possible. By default, the product uses a LAN-free backup mode, which can leverage your fiber-channel and iSCSI SANs. With the Hot Add mode, you can offload management and production networks while significantly increasing data transfer speeds.

You can also enable the Network Acceleration feature, which uses compression and traffic reduction techniques to speed up data transfer. On average, this results in a network load reduction of 50% and a 2X data transfer speed boost.

Copy VMware Backups for 3-2-1 Data Protection

If you keep backups in the same location as production VMs, any disaster could wipe out both your VMs and their backups. Even barring any major disasters, a virtual machine backup could be damaged, get accidentally deleted, or become unavailable if your storage goes down. Any of these scenarios leaves you with no data and a potentially massive headache.

With Backup Copy jobs, your VMware backups can be easily sent offsite and to Amazon or Azure Clouds. The data is copied directly from your backup repository; production VMs are not affected. Backup Copy jobs can be set up in a few minutes for your vSphere backup VMs and can be customized to suit your needs. You can choose to simply maintain a mirrored copy of your backup repository, or fine-tune which VMware VMs get copied, when, where, and how.

Test Your VMware Backups to Ensure Recoverability

The fact that you have VMware vSphere backups doesn’t necessarily mean that you can recover your VMs from them. Even if a backup has completed successfully, recovery can fail for a number of reasons: the backup consistency could be compromised by a virus, third-party software, a disk error or a change in file permissions. Your VM could have already been damaged before the backup was performed, and might not even be bootable.

The only reliable way to ensure that you can recover from your backups is by performing test recoveries. After each backup job run, NAKIVO Backup & Replication can automatically and near-instantly verify all backups created. You can receive a report with OS screenshots of the test-recovered VMs. This way, you can be certain that your VMware backups are functional.

Save Storage Space to Avoid Extra Costs

NAKIVO Backup & Replication automatically excludes swap files and partitions from VMware VM backups. This speeds up data transfer and saves storage space in the backup repository. To further reduce backup size, NAKIVO Backup & Replication can automatically deduplicate all VM backups across the entire backup repository. Data deduplication works at the block level and ensures that only unique data blocks are saved. On top of that, deduplicated blocks are compressed to further optimize your storage space.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports EMC Data Domain, HP StoreOnce, NEC HYDRAstor, and Quantum DXi deduplication appliances. In combination with the software, they serve as special backup repositories. Owing to their outstanding deduplication capabilities, such appliances ensure that backup data consumes as little space as possible, as well as improving your backup performance.

Instantly Recover Items From VM Backups

You can instantly recover VMware VMs, files, and application objects directly from the deduplicated VM backups. Granular recovery is performed directly from the backup repository and does not require you to run a full restore from the VMware backup. With Cross-Platform Recovery, you can recover VMware VMs in a Hyper-V environment and vice versa.

Offload Your IT Team to Increase Productivity

Our VMware backup software allows you to create multiple isolated tenants within a single product deployment and manage them from a single pane of glass. This way, you can introduce backup-as-a-service to your clients more easily and cost-effectively. In the Multi-Tenant mode, tenants can access the self-service portal to offload vSphere backup, replication, and recovery tasks from the service provider.

Easily Scale Out as Your Infrastructure Grows

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can grow along with your environment to support higher workloads. Our customers range from small shops with a few VMs to large ISPs that protect thousands of VMs across multiple datacenters.

You can scale out NAKIVO Backup & Replication both vertically, by providing more resources to the product, and horizontally, by distributing product components within the same location or across multiple locations.
Policy-Based Data Protection

NAKIVO Backup & Replication was designed for maximized simplicity and efficiency in data protection management. With help from this software, you can easily automate your ESXi VM backup with data protection policies. Each policy is a set of rules based on specific criteria such as a VM’s name, size, tag, etc. Once configured, this advanced functionality can add virtual machines matching such policies to existing data protection jobs. Similarly, if your VMs no longer meet the criteria, they are automatically excluded from your backups. This way, NAKIVO Backup & Replication’s data protection policies relieve you of the need to monitor each and every change in your constantly growing infrastructure and manually add new VMs to relevant jobs, saving you precious time.

Screenshot Verification

Successfully performed VM backups do not always guarantee a successful recovery. However, with NAKIVO Backup & Replication in place, you can get proof that your backups are valid and usable for recovery. Based on Flash VM Boot, the Screenshot Verification feature can test-recover backed-up virtual machines (with networking turned off) upon each VM backup job and make a screenshot of a booted OS. Such screenshot-based reports can be delivered to you either directly in the product’s interface or via email. The functionality can be set up to run automatically or turned on for specific jobs. Screenshot Verification minimizes the risk of failed recoveries and their consequences, helping you save time and effort.

Automated VM Failover

While in most cases disaster is not something that can be foreseen and prevented, its consequences and overall damage can be mitigated. NAKIVO Backup & Replication is an integrated solution offering advanced DR functionality. With Automated VM Failover, you can recover from disasters by running a single job. Once you have replicas of your business-critical machines, you can transfer your workloads to a secondary location in one click. To bring your DR automation to the next level, NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows you to create network mapping and re-IP rules. Since servers at the primary site and DR site differ in configurations, you can set up a rule to switch VM replicas from one network to another upon failover and assign new IPs to them, turning recovery activities into a smooth process.

VMware VM Backup Copy

VM backups can be rendered unavailable for a variety of reasons: human error, corruption, hardware failure, ransomware attack, or other undesired events. Having only a primary backup creates a single point of failure and makes your business vulnerable to any of the aforementioned threats. NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows you to create and maintain more than one copy of your VMware VM backups. You can store copies of your backups in the cloud, at a safe remote location, and also onsite. For more convenience, you can set up your VMware backup copy jobs to run right after the initial backup job is completed. Thus, even if your primary VM backup file becomes unavailable, you always have a plan B in case of an unplanned disruption.

Flexible Job Scheduling

Data protection in large infrastructures can be a time- and resource-consuming activity requiring extra attention and proper planning. With the Calendar Dashboard, you can view all your past and current VMware VM backup jobs, schedule new ones, analyze job details, estimate the time needed to complete a particular job, etc. Thanks to a bird’s-eye view of all your jobs, you can avoid overlaps in your data protection processes and evenly distribute the load on your production environment. The Calendar Dashboard functionality adds more convenience and control to your daily data protection management.

Flash VM Boot

While you may be able to afford having longer RTOs for the majority of your VMs, fast recovery of your business-critical virtual machines is imperative. The Flash VM Boot functionality in NAKIVO Backup & Replication is aimed at delivering the tightest RTOs possible. If you back up your VMs on a regular basis, you can be sure that you can have any of them up and running immediately by booting them directly from compressed and deduplicated backups. You are free to choose a recovery location for your virtual machines – a host, a resource pool, or a cluster. The process is easy and straightforward, allowing you to focus on other data protection tasks rather than spending time and effort on recovery activities.

Universal Object Recovery

Organizations and businesses are often subject to data loss, which varies both in form and scope. The process of restoring lost data can take time, especially if you need to bring back the entire VM to extract an individual item. Universal Object Recovery in NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows you to recover any object in your infrastructure without recovering entire virtual machines first in a fast and simple manner. You can grab the most recent VM backup, mount it to a VM of your choice, and recover the object you need with the help of the native application tools – it’s as simple as that. With this feature in place, you can recover objects with virtually no restrictions on applications or file systems at any time in a matter of minutes.

Advanced Bandwidth Throttling

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, you can get more control over your bandwidth consumption. The Advanced Bandwidth Throttling functionality enables you to set limits for your vSpere VM backup jobs when needed. For example, during busy business hours, your LAN and WAN networks are already loaded, and running data protection jobs can impact the performance of your business applications. In such case you can create flexible rules limiting bandwidth use on a global or per-job basis. Once configured, you can be sure that your VM backup jobs will take exactly as much bandwidth as they were initially allocated. This feature provides you with an effective means of optimizing your backup operations while reducing network load.

LAN-Free Data Transfer

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication you can perform your vSphere VM backups up to 2x faster and notably reduce the load on your network with LAN-free data transfer. This is achieved with the help of two features– Hot Add and Direct SAN Access. Hot Add allows the software to bypass the host’s TCP/IP stack, which helps lower impact on VMs and speed up data transfer during the job. Direct SAN Access is useful if your VMs are located on a Fiber Channel or iSCSI storage area network (SAN) since the software reads VM data directly from a SAN storage device over Fiber Channel or ISCSI. Both features help deliver significantly higher backup performance, while removing the load from your production network.

Network Acceleration

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a comprehensive VM backup solution featuring an extensive feature set, developed to ensure superior VM backup performance. The Network Acceleration functionality relies on the use of two Transporters, which helps divide the workload between them. Before VM backup data reaches the repository, it is read, compressed, and optimized by the source Transporter and then sent to the target transporter. This way, the amount of data that travels to repository is significantly smaller, allowing your network to handle the data transfer much faster. As a result, you achieve higher backup speed, shorten your backup windows, and reduce the load on your production network, all the while speeding up the recovery process.

VM Backup Encryption

As one of the leading VMware backup solutions in the industry, NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers built-in encryption mechanisms for protecting your VM backups from non-authorized access. To ensure proper levels of your business data security, AES 256 encryption standard is used by the software to protect your vSphere VM backups both in flight and at rest. The former is performed with the help of two transporters, encrypting data offsite before the transfer and decrypting it prior to saving at the destination. Encryption at rest, in turn, helps secure data stored in backup repositories. VM backup encryption in NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a reliable means to ensure compliance with data security requirements and deliver you peace of mind.

API for VM Backup Automation

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides you with mechanisms to integrate the software with monitoring, automation, and orchestration solutions. You can use a simple HTTP API to automate and orchestrate your VMware VM backups. For faster integration, the API is included into an Integration Kit together with API documentation and code examples. By integrating NAKIVO Backup & Replication with third-party solutions, you can gain multiple benefits such as significant time savings, better monitoring capabilities, reduced storage space requirements, smoother data protection processes, higher recovery speeds, and much more.
Automate Your Backup Operations

VMware backup automation can deliver multiple benefits. You can save significant amounts of time, reduce the number of IT personnel involved in data protection management, as well as minimize the possibility of human error. NAKIVO Backup & Replication includes automation tools to streamline your VM backup process. You can create backup policies or configure jobs to protect VM folders, resource pools, ESXi hosts, or VMware ESXi clusters. You can also easily integrate the software with third-party solutions via HTTP APIs for further orchestration and better monitoring.

Perform Incremental Backup With Changed Block Tracking

CBT is a native VMware technology that can be leveraged by backup software for quicker and more efficient vSphere VM backups. With the technology in place, VM backup solutions perform backups in increments, copying data that have been changed since the last backup job, with no need to copy each block of the entire VM. NAKIVO Backup & Replication relies on CBT technology to perform incremental backups, which brings about higher backup performance, lowers storage space requirements, and saves time.

Control Bandwidth Consumption

Thorough control over your bandwidth consumption should not be underestimated since this is where bottlenecks in backup and business application performance frequently occur. A backup schedule that coincides with high load during business hours can result in insufficient performance of both processes. To mitigate such a possibility, you can limit traffic consumed by your VM backup jobs during specific periods of time. NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides you with the opportunity to take full control over your bandwidth with the Advanced Bandwidth Throttling functionality.

Have Extra Copies of Your Backups

While having a vSphere VM backup provides you with the means for recovery, you should never rely exclusively on your primary backups. The 3-2-1 backup rule dictates that that at least three copies of data are kept on two different types of storage media, at least one of which is offsite. This rule is widely acknowledged as one of the backup best practices, allowing you to eliminate a single point of failure, which can be the case if you have only one copy of a backup. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, you can create copies of your backups onsite, offsite, or in the cloud, making the backups compliant with the 3-2-1 rule.

Encrypt Your Backup Data

Your business-critical or customer data is a high-value target for cybercriminals, which makes security the most obvious reason to consider implementing backup encryption. Best practices suggest that if you back up offsite, your VM backups should be encrypted during the data transfer and also at the destination. For such purposes, NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses the de facto worldwide encryption standard – AES 256 – to protect backups from unauthorized access both in flight and at rest.

Verify Your Backups to Ensure Recoverability

Corrupted backups can leave you with no options for recovery, which can be very costly if it comes to an actual disaster. Verification of VM backup validity should be a part of your data protection operations. Such verification can make sure that you will be able to recovery important elements of your infrastructure under any circumstances. To guarantee such a possibility, NAKIVO Backup & Replication includes the Screenshot Verification functionality. Upon job completion, the feature can take a screenshot of a test-recovered VM as proof of validity and usability of the backup.

Schedule Your Jobs to Avoid Overlaps

Infrastructures with hundreds of VMs require thorough backup planning, which often makes the backup management process laborious. To address this, NAKIVO Backup & Replication features a simple calendar-based job scheduler. The Calendar Dashboard makes it possible to avoid job overlaps, minimize load on production networks caused by such overlaps, detect areas that require protection, and quickly act on them. The feature allows you to see the big picture and approach backup management in a simpler, more organized, and strategic manner.