Veeam Software seeks simplified management with its latest batch of updates. In addition, Kasten by Veeam enhanced support for its Kubernetes data protection.
Veeam has integrated Kasten into its platform, almost exactly one year after its acquisition of the Kubernetes backup provider.
Users can take a backup with Kasten's K10 platform, send it into a Veeam repository and benefit from Veeam's capabilities, such as monitoring and recovery.
Veeam backup updates announced on Tuesday also include new features for its flagship platform and cloud offerings. In addition, Kasten will launch expanded edge and ecosystem support.
Both Veeam Backup & Replication v11a and Kasten K10 4.5 are scheduled to become generally available later in October. Veeam's v11a is in early availability.
K10 4.5 will be able to direct backups of Kubernetes clusters that use VMware persistent volumes to a Veeam Backup & Replication repository. Users can manage the lifecycle there.
"It allows for simplified management," said Veeam CTO Danny Allan.
With the Veeam Backup & Replication data path integration added to K10 4.5, users will have better visibility and easier access into the common repository that includes containerized Kubernetes applications and access to Veeam's portable backup file format for volume content, according to Allan.
"This release was a big step forward, with Kasten being able to send backups to Veeam repositories and becoming integrated into the Backup & Replication user interface," said Krista Macomber, senior analyst at Evaluator Group.
In the Kubernetes environment, there are many other services that Veeam wants to support, Allan said.
"As a next step, I could see Veeam targeting DevOps with an integration of Kasten and Veeam's Disaster Recovery Orchestrator, to automate recoveries and to streamline the process of verifying recovery readiness," Macomber said.
Kasten has a lot of customers invested in Veeam Backup & Replication, said Gaurav Rishi, Kasten's vice president of product. Kasten does not release specific customer numbers. Veeam claims more than 400,000 customers.
K10 integrations also include support for backup targets such as HPE Apollo and StoreOnce, Cisco UCS S3260, Dell EMC Data Domain and NetApp E-Series, according to Kasten.
The product added K3s and Amazon EKS Anywhere Kubernetes distributions to help developers secure edge endpoints and applications.
"Attacks are getting more sophisticated," Rishi said. For example, they are penetrating backups.
At the same time, container use is on the rise.
"There's a little bit of a perfect storm [for data protection] with ransomware everywhere," said Vinny Choinski, senior lab analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).
K10 made ease-of-use adjustments as well. For example, the quick-glance dashboard includes the number of clusters under management, policies configured, and actions failed and completed, Choinski said.
Insights into Kasten K10 4.5 operations include system health, storage growth, policies run, and success and failure rates.
According to an ESG study in 2020 that asked which capability is most critical for recovery of multi-container business applications, data consistency and application consistency were the most popular choices, with 43% and 22%, respectively.
For future releases, Choinski suggested analytics and continued growth of the ecosystem as areas for Kasten to consider.
We've actually tested the ability to restore to the cloud, and it works well.
Krista MacomberSenior analyst, Evaluator Group
Other vendors that provide Kubernetes protection include Catalogic Software, Commvault, Pure Storage's Portworx, Trilio and Zerto, now part of HPE.
Veeam backup updates added features across its hyperscale public cloud support -- AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
They include:
native backup and recovery to Amazon Elastic File System and Microsoft Azure SQL Databases;
new support for Amazon S3 Glacier, S3 Glacier Deep Archive, Microsoft Azure Archive Storage and Google Cloud Archive Storage; and
integrations with AWS Key Management Service and Azure Key Vault to protect encrypted backup data from ransomware and other cyberthreats.
Veeam has centralized AWS, Azure and Google Cloud backup and recovery under one console. Users can directly restore any Veeam backup to AWS, Azure and now Google Cloud.
That cloud mobility component stands out, Macomber said.
"We've actually tested the ability to restore to the cloud, and it works well," she said.
The Veeam backup updates also include support for Red Hat Virtualization, now in public beta; instant recovery to Nutanix AHV; centralized management of Veeam Agents in Backup & Replication v11a; and a new view into immutability in the Veeam One monitoring and analytics tool.
Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget.
