Acronis vmProtect

New Features

What's new in Acronis vmProtect 7?

• Replicate VMs onto other host machines - create and incrementally update a copy of a VM on another host. This replicated VM can be used when the original host or VM goes down for even faster recoveries.
• Manage backup and recovery from VMware vCenter - perform backup and recovery tasks directly from vCenter (or you can continue to use the Web-based interface).
• Support for Microsoft Exchange recovery - recover an entire Microsoft Exchange Server database or just the mailboxes, emails, contacts or other items you need, directly from a VM. Supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, 2007, or 2003 SP2+.
• Bare metal recover of vSphere ESXi hosts to dissimilar hardware - backup VMware ESXi hosts - including the configuration settings and all VMs - and restore to the same machine or another machine with dissimilar hardware.
• Automatically generated disaster recovery plan - automatically create documentation of the steps to recover your data.

Features

Flexible deployment

• Virtual appliance - a purpose-built Acronis vmProtect 7 Virtual Appliance can be deployed directly onto the ESX or ESXi server hardware host. This method saves the cost and work associated with provisioning, configuring and maintaining a dedicated machine, or having to purchase new hardware or a Windows license.
• Windows-based agent - Acronis vmProtect 7 can be installed to a Windows server (physical or virtual) and back up VMware vSphere virtual machines remotely. This method allows offloading processing from ESX/ESXi hosts to a dedicated machine.
• Per-CPU licensing - Acronis vmProtect 7 is priced per host CPU socket and allows backup and recovery of unlimited number of VMs.

Optimised for VMware vSphere

• Agentless backup and recovery - Acronis vmProtect 7 uses VMware API for Data Protection (VADP) to perform backup and recovery of virtual machines, thus requiring no agents installed in the virtual machines, saving management cost and minimising resource consumption.
• Change Block Tracking - VMware CBT technology tracks changes of a virtual machine since previous backup and makes incremental backups faster than ever.
• Always-incremental backup - Once a full backup is created, successor backups are always incremental, transferring and storing only those changes that have been made since the previous backup. This is achieved using a new storage format that minimises the time required to automatically remove old backups while ensuring that all other incremental backups remain valid.
• LAN-free - With SAN direct access (Windows Agent) or hot-plug technology (Virtual Appliance) vmProtect 7 reads data directly from a shared storage, avoiding unnecessary load on the LAN and ESX(i) host.
• VM Snapshot Hot-plug - Acronis vmProtect 7 Virtual Appliance can mount virtual machine snapshots during backup instead of transferring data over TCP/IP network which reduces resource consumption and significantly improves backup throughput.
• VMware vMotion/DRS Compatibility - Acronis vmProtect 7 is fully compatible with VMware vMotion, Storage vMotion and DRS: virtual machines can be moved between VMware hosts manually, or automatically in order to dynamically adjust resources or recover from failure.
• Virtual Application (vApp) Support - Virtual applications or vApps is a VMware vSphere feature that allows you to group several virtual machines serving the same application in special containers with application-specific configuration such as start order or resource pool settings. Acronis vmProtect 7 can back up and recover entire vApps including their configuration.

Manage with vCenter or Web UI

• Run from VMware vCenter - Perform vmProtect 7's backup and recovery tasks from vCenter, the familiar interface you're already using to manage your vSphere environment.
• Web-based Interface - Alternatively, use vmProtect7's intuitive web interface to perform all backup and recovery tasks from anywhere using any major web browser.

Efficient, secure backups

• Fastest and smallest backups - vmProtect 7 uses Acronis award-winning imaging technology to dig inside virtual machine disks and analyse file systems to only backup data blocks that are actually used.
• Exclude files from a VM backup - Acronis vmProtect 7 allows you to exclude files and folders/directories from a virtual machine backup to save space and shorten backup time.
• Built-in data deduplication - included with the Acronis vmProtect 7 license, reduces backup size and time by backing up only unique blocks of data.
• Simultaneous backup - Acronis vmProtect 7 shrinks backup windows by backing up multiple virtual machines simultaneously.
• Compression - Backup files can be compressed to a smaller size before copying to storage
• 256-bit encryption - Backups can be encrypted using the industry-standard 256-bit AES algorithm.
• Backup verification - Backup files can be verified to ensure their consistency and recoverability. Unlike verification functions found in some competing products, vmProtect 7 verification is performed by an agent and it is not necessary to run temporary virtual machines.
• Disaster Recovery Plan - automatically creates documentation of the steps to recover your data.

Rapid recovery

• Rapid recovery of VMs - Virtual Machines can be recovered quickly by simply running the VM from its backup without having to do a full restore. Recover an entire virtual machine to replace an existing VM image that got corrupted, or recover as a brand new VM to any ESX/ESXi host. Mount backup storage to ESX/ESXi host as a NFS share and run virtual machine directly from the backup without having to run a full restore process - this provides nearly instantaneous recovery. Changes made to the virtual machine are not lost and can be saved back to the backup image.
• Replication - Create and incrementally update a copy of your VM on another host. Using replication, a virtual machine can be recovered by starting the VM created by replication residing on the other host. This can result in even faster recovery than running the VM from its backup.
• Recover Microsoft Exchange items - Recover directly from the VM an entire Microsoft Exchange Server database or just the mailboxes, emails, contacts, or other items you need. Supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, 2007, or 2003 SP2+.
• Bare Metal Recovery - Backup a VMware ESXi host and recover that host, including the binaries for the VMware hypervisor, configuration settings, and all VMs managed by the hypervisor - to the same machine or to another machine with dissimilar hardware. VMware ESXi v5 /4.1 versions are supported.

P2V/V2V migrations

• Reliable and unlimited Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) and Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) migrations - Acronis vmProtect 7 includes award-winning Acronis imaging technology to reliably convert physical machines or virtual machines from other hypervisors to VMware vSphere virtual machines.

System Req.

Hypervisors

Acronis vmProtect 7 can back up and recover virtual machines running on:

• VMware vSphere v5, 4.1, and 4.0.
• VMware ESX and VMware ESXi hypervisors are supported except for the free version. For more information see Acronis KB Article http://kb.acronis.com/content/23892.
• Virtual machines can run any guest operating system supported by VMware vSphere.

Operating Systems

If not installing vmProtect 7 as a Linux Virtual Appliance directly on a VMware vSphere host, it can be installed on x86 (32 bit) and x64 (64 bit) versions of:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 /2008 R2 / 2003 / 2003 R2
• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional / Ultimate
• Microsoft Windows Vista Business / Ultimate
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2+.

File Systems

• FAT16/32
• NTFS
• Ext2/Ext3/Ext4.

Storage

• Hard disk drives and storage arrays (P-ATA (IDE), S-ATA, SCSI, iSCSI, FC)
• NAS (SMB and FTP)
• Acronis Online Storage.

Exchange

• Supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, 2007, or 2003 SP2+.