With the latest release from Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 4 there has been a large set of new functionality, so much it seems like a major release (Could have been version 10) so this is a list of the new biggest functionality that has been added to the latest version from a service provider perspective.
1: Cloud Connect Gateway Pools
In the previous versions, all Cloud Connect Gateways were treated as equals and when a client connects, Veeam uses DNS Load Balancing to connect to one of the Gateways that a service provider has available. In some cases you might want to have a dedicated set of Gateway’s for a large customer or have gateway’s on a separate virtual network such as MPLS based network. With Update 4, Veeam has now introduced a new feature called Cloud Connect Gateway Pools which allows us to group a set of gateways that a part of a Cloud Connect setup for a dedicated customer.
2: Support for Cloud based Capacity
Also with this release, we now also have support for Cloud based Object Storage, such as IBM, AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage which means that from a tenant perspective that we can have the last 30 days of data stored on a cloud connect service provider local repository and then move the archive or later up to a Cloud Partner.
When you add a Cloud Object Storage, you define which partner and define a set of credentials for the connection and then you need to define how data will be pushed out to the cloud providers. Where you can define that all data should be pushed out either using Veeam Cloud Gateway’s or that the Veeam repositories need to have direct internet access. Such as this scenario we can add Azure Storage Blob where we can define which Container (in Azure Blob) and which folder data will be stored. It is important to understand that an Azure Storage Account has an restriction in terms of throughput (Which you can see here –> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-scalability-targets)
And we can also limit how much data that should be used to the storage account itself. When you add Object Storage Repository such as Azure you need to define a Azure Storage Account name and a Storage Account Key.
Using Object Storage you can bind this in a scale-out backup repository and define a placement policy. Where you state that backups older then for instance 30 days are then moved to a Azure based Storage Account. You can also define a master password that will be used to encrypt data uploaded to object storage. Note that this password will be used for encrypting all data moved to the cloud object storage. If you want to define a separate password you would need to create a separate Scale-Out Backup Repository with its own Capacity Tier and placement policy.
3: New Features added to Availability Console
Availability Console is coming with new feature as well, which is scheduled to come a bit later, but Availability Console is also supported with Update 4 using a compability patch which can be found here –> https://www.veeam.com/kb2835
There is also other added functionality and services such as in Availability Suite (From the release notes)
- Tenant to tape jobs. Cloud Connect backups can be written to tape with the hand of GFS media pool and Backup to Tape jobs. This functionality only works with backups create by U4 version of B&R and VAW.
- Further cloud service performance improvements. Multiple optimizations have been introduced to increase cloud service performance and reliability on environments protecting thousands of Virtual or Physical machines
- Tenant-driven password change. Tenants can now change the password they use to connect to the service provider by editing one on the registered service provider.
- VMware 6.7 Update 1 support.
- Windows 2019 (1809) support.
For tenants to be able to use this new functionality that Veeam provides, the tenants need to upgrade to Update 4 first.
Update Process
The upgrade process should be done in correct steps and as a service provider you should update before your tenants have upgraded or else the tenants will have issues connecting to you as a service provider.
In the event that you do not upgrade your Cloud Connect environment before your tenant does, the following message will appear within their UI:
Your service provider uses an outdated Cloud Connect platform version that is not compatible with your product version.
Backwards compatibility Update 4 is backwards compatible with the following earlier versions of Veeam backup software: ▪ Veeam Backup & Replication: 9.5 Update 4 can host backups and replicas from 9.0.0.1715 and later. ▪ Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows: 9.5 Update 4 can host backups from 2.0.0.700 and later. ▪ Veeam Agent for Linux: 9.5 Update 4 can host backups from 2.0.0.400 and later. Also if you have Office 365 as part of your offering you should also upgrade with the latest hotfix –> https://www.veeam.com/kb2809
https://www.veeam.com/kb2832 – Veeam ONE
https://www.veeam.com/kb2835 – Veeam Availability Console
You can read more about this here on Anthony Spiteri, blogpost here –> https://anthonyspiteri.net/important-updates-for-vac-vbo-and-veeam-one-update-4-is-coming/