Veeam Software has announced Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure, available for preview as a free, pre-configured Azure appliance in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace that delivers cloud restore for Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Endpoint Backup.
Available now, this new solution enables users to take on-premises workloads and restore or migrate them to the cloud using an automated physical-to-virtual or virtual-to-virtual conversion process.
“The flexible, scalable and cost-effective nature of the hybrid cloud is becoming more compelling to IT administrators, and Azure continues to seize strong market penetration and momentum,” says Ratmir Timashev, CEO of Veeam Software. “Direct Restore extends current investments in Veeam Availability solutions for our users and also enables them to fully utilize the power of the cloud. Veeam provides IT administrators with the flexibility and scalability of Microsoft Azure and the availability and data management expertise.”
IDC is finding that the move to hybrid cloud is already occurring, and will continue to accelerate in the near future. According to a recent IDC Research surve, “Depending on the exact definition of a hybrid cloud, 20% to 45% of respondents have already adopted what they consider to be a hybrid cloud strategy, while nearly all respondents have some aspirations for a hybrid cloud.”
“By 2018, over half of enterprises’ IT infrastructure and software investments will be cloud-based, reaching 60% to 70% by 2020,” writes Frank Gens, senior vice-president and chief analyst at IDC Research. “Pursuing [digital transformation] initiatives without a cloud IT foundation will be utterly impossible.”
In order to meet the new challenges posed by accelerating cloud adoption, with Direct Restore to Azure users can quickly restore Windows-based VMs, physical servers or endpoints to Azure to minimize business disruption. The new feature also enables users to execute planned workload migrations from on-site to the cloud to reduce on-site resource constraints. Azure-based test environments can easily be created for testing backup reliability as well as for patches and critical updates to mitigate risks associated with application deployment.
Veeam already enables organizations to store backups in Azure with Veeam Cloud Connect (VCC) for the Enterprise (VCC-E), which is also available in the Azure Marketplace. Customers can instantly provision cloud backup repositories and automatically move on-premises backup archives to Azure. This powerful combination of Microsoft and Veeam provides enterprise customers with cost-effective Azure storage plus the granular recovery capabilities of Veeam.
The ability to restore backups directly means users can utilize Azure as an on-demand cloud data center for disaster recovery (DR) and benefit from its flexible and scalable cloud resources. Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure enables organisations to take full advantage of the Azure cloud platform as they transform their data center to enable the Always-On Enterprise. According to IDC, cloud will play a critical role in digital transformation efforts.
“Cloud already plays a key role in enabling the modern data center,” says Nicole Herskowitz, senior director of product marketing: Microsoft Azure at Microsoft. “Through the combination of Veeam and Microsoft Azure, IT can now use Veeam to migrate or restore on-premises data to our cloud and take advantage of the unparalleled scalability, reliability and robustness of Azure. Together, we’re ensuring that our customers’ data is always available.”
This new feature is designed for customers to restore Veeam backups created by Veeam Backup & Replication, Veeam Endpoint Backup free, and Veeam Backup Free Edition to Azure (IaaS). Available now, this new feature will also be integrated into future versions of Veeam Backup & Replication.
