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Ben Armstrong AMA on Containers–Altaro free webinar

Hi to all Smile,

I’m very exited to share with you this amazing free webinar powered by Altaro where you can listen the one and only, Ben Armstrong, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft and co-creator of Hyper-V.
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Tuesday April 24th 2018
Webinar presented live twice
Session 1: 4pm CEST
Session 2: 1pm EDT / 10am PDT

Think containers are just for developers? Think again. Containers have recently gained massive industry adoption and many IT pros are now being asked to support this new disruptive technology. Are you in the know?

Join us on April 24th for a very special webinar with the co-creator of Hyper-V, Microsoft’s very own Ben Armstrong. Andy Syrewicze from Altaro will be moderating this Ask Me Anything (AMA) webinar with Ben to answer all your burning questions about containers in the Microsoft ecosystem.

The discussion will include:

  • Industry adoption of containers
  • Container and micro-services examples
  • Best practices for deployment
  • The future of containers

Designed for the next generation of IT workloads, containers enable a fast and reliable virtualization of individual applications. More lightweight than VMs, whilst delivering similar benefits, containers were historically confined to developers but are now an essential part of the modern day IT professional toolbox.

This webinar is a rare chance to find out directly from Ben Armstrong how you can use containers to enhance your virtual deployments by drawing on his special insights from the inner workings of Microsoft and over 20 years of experience developing operating systems and virtualization platforms. It’s an opportunity you cannot miss!

Want to ensure your question gets answered? Send your questions over facebook and twitter using the hashtag #AskBenArmstrong.

Unable to attend? Register anyway and we’ll send you the recording shortly after the webinar ends. All registrants will also receive a complete question list, gathered from social media and during the event itself, alongside full answers from Ben!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Cheers,

Romeo

Romeo Mlinar
April 19, 2018
Hyper-V
0 comments

Altaro VM Backup 7.6 released

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Altaro released a new version of its flagship backup product for Hyper-V and VMware. In version 7.6 Altaro introduced several important new features which all users will love.

Continuous Data Protection (CDP) for Local Backups

Continuous Data Protection (CDP) – users can switch from running daily backups to a continuous data protection model yielding an improved Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of up to 5 minutes. This dramatically reduces the Recovery Point Objective (RPO). RPO is the point in time to which VMs are restored by a backup solution in case of a disaster. With CDP in place, users’ RPO is optimized to up to 5 minutes, instead of the hours of data loss faced in cases where users are simply running daily backups.

Note- CDP is currently available for Hyper-V, VMware support will be released soon.

Grandfather-Father-Son Archiving (GFS) for Local Backups

Altaro VM Backup 7.6 introduces GFS, enabling users to choose to archive the backup versions over and above their continuous and daily backups instead of deleting them (local backups only).

With GFS Archiving enabled, Altaro VM Backup also keeps the following backups, with the time periods are shown all starting from the time of the last successful backup:

  • 1 backup per week for 12 weeks
  • 1 backup per month for 12 months
  • 1 backup per year for 2 years

Change Block Tracking Updates for 2012/2012R2

CBT refers to Change Block Tracking and allows users to take fast incremental backups without having to scan the entire virtual machine (VM) for changes each time. This can reduce backup duration down from hours to minutes. When CBT is not available, a lengthy full scan for changes is required.

This release addresses an issue in Altaro VM Backup 7 CBT for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 where CBT is disabled and a full scan for changes is required in the following scenarios:

  • Altaro VM Backup or one of the Hyper-V Host agents is updated
  • Altaro VM Backup services or one of the Hyper-V Host agents is restarted
  • A Hyper-V Host is restarted
  • A Virtual Machine on a Failover Cluster migrates between nodes.

Altaro VM Backup 7.6 addresses this and the above scenarios do not require that a full scan is taken.

Concurrent Retention, Restore, Backup and Offsite Copy operations on the same Virtual Machine

In previous Altaro VM Backup versions only one operation could be performed on a Virtual Machine at the same time. 

· If a retention policy takes quite long to complete then backups and restore operations are queued until retention is complete.

· If an Offsite Copy to Azure takes days to complete, especially for the initial backup; then backups and restore operations for that VM are queued until it is complete.

· If a Restore, File Level Restore or Boot from Backup operation is active then no backups for that Virtual Machine could take place until they are completed.

In Altaro VM Backup 7.6 these limitations have been addressed, allowing users to restore and take Offsite Copies without delaying any Backups whether scheduled or CDP.
In addition to that, now that it can run concurrently, the retention operation runs four times throughout the day in order to keep the backup repository clean.

Summary

From my perspective, Altaro VM Backup is constantly evolving product and more and more features are implemented for easier backup and restore. If you haven’t tested Altaro simply download test version and try it.

Cheers,

Romeo

Romeo Mlinar
April 16, 2018
Administration, Hyper-V, Virtualization, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016
0 comments

Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 is now Generally Available and includes Tape Support & Flexible Restores

It is highly important that data needs to be backed up and there should be an effective Disaster Recovery plan in case of data threat or a catastrophe. While data continues to grow and there are number of technology providers who offer better and comprehensive storage techniques to businesses, there has not been an alternative to the concept of backup. While costs are a major factor for businesses, having a steady backup plan to counter data threats and compliant to strict regulatory standards(including the upcoming EU’s GDPR) is necessary. Be it virtual environment backup like VMware Backup, Microsoft Hyper-V Backup or legacy environment backup like Windows Server Backup, Workstation backup, Vembu BDR Suite has been offering Backup & Recovery with their own file-system, VembuHIVE thereby easing the backup process, storage management at an extremely affordable pricing.

Last week, they did announce the release of Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 which offers manifold features and enhancements to meet the different needs of Diverse IT environments. According to them, the overall goal of the new version v3.9.0 is to provide advancements in terms of Storage, Security, and Data Restoration.

Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 release is distinct because a number of critical features are incorporated for maintaining business continuity and to function effectively for high availability. Here are some of the key highlights of this release:

Tape Backup Support

Vembu now provides the popular 3-2-1 backup strategy( copies of backup in 2 medias(Disk and Tape) and 1 backup copy at offsite) to businesses by announcing the support for Native Tape Backup for Image-based Backups (VMware, Hyper-V, and Physical Windows Servers & Workstations) providing an option for Long-Term Archival and Offsite storage. Also, Vembu Tape Backup Support makes the DR possible on any physical or virtual environment. Thus Vembu Tape backup is designed keeping in mind the future needs of the ever evolving IT demands.

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Quick VM Recovery on ESXi host for Hyper-V and Windows Image Backups

As we speak of data backup, recovery of data is equally important, if not more. While data recovery is crucial, the amount of time taken to restore data decides the business continuity of any organization. In the previous versions, Vembu has provided instant recovery capabilities only for VMware Backups from the GUI. From this release v3.9.0, Vembu makes the instant recovery process much simpler and quicker than before by making the Quick VM Recovery possible on VMware ESXi from Vembu BDR backup server console for all image-based backups(VMware, Hyper-V and Microsoft Windows). Thus, Vembu lowers the Recovery Time Objectives of the organizations and provides quicker data regain and access.

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Backup-level Encryption

With the newest release, Vembu provides the ability to encrypt the data while creating a backup job. Each backup job that is configured from the distributed agents or through the Vembu BDR backup server is now highly secured through Backup-level Encryption. By using customized passwords, users will now be able to enable additional security for their backup jobs. And the backup data can be restored/accessed only by providing the password. Thus, the data is encrypted and can only be accessed by authorized users. This step is to fight data threats and also to ensure data compliances.

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Auto Authorization at Vembu OffsiteDR Server

Offsite data protection is critical in terms of business continuity and is primarily done to keep a backup instance of key business data. To increase data security, Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 has Auto Authorization feature at Vembu OffsiteDR server that lets only the registered BDR backup servers to connect to the OffsiteDR server. Vembu BDR servers are authorized through unique registration key generated at the OffsiteDR server. Thus, safeguard all your backup data even if they are transferred to offsite through Auto-Authorization at OffsiteDR server

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Pre/Post backup scripts

Many businesses are in a need to execute certain business logic before or after a backup job. But running these logics manually through scripts is difficult and is not feasible for organizations having multiple backup jobs running in their IT infrastructure. To make this process simpler, Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 provides a separate wizard in NetworkBackup, OnlineBackup and ImageBackup clients, where one can add a number of pre and post executable commands/scripts. This helps in automatically executing the added commands/scripts at specific stages based on the configuration and provides the ability to run the custom actions before/after the backup schedules.

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Besides all the listed features, Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 has few interesting features like Windows Event Viewer Integration along with some Enhancements.

Interested in trying Vembu BDR suite?, Try Now on a 30-days free trial: https://www.vembu.com/vembu-bdr-suite-download/

Cheers,

Romeo

Romeo Mlinar
January 22, 2018
Administration, Hyper-V, Recovery
0 comments