Of all the features that have been added to the latest version of Veeam, there is one that really stands out as the killer feature.  This feature is available in all of the licensed versions of Veeam, and there are no restrictions on the base functionality.  This feature wasn’t widely heralded from what I can tell.

That feature, in my opinion, is the Backup Copy Job.  As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to dedicate a little more time to this feature.

But I have a confession to make.  I want to make it clear that I don’t know what features are in Commvault, NetVault, Symantec, Avamar or other backup solutions.  Similar features probably do exist.  I do know that other software vendors have had GFS rotation for a long time, but I don’t know enough to say how it ties in with their virtualization backup or their offsite capabilites.  I also just want to focus on Veeam’s implementation.

So why am I making a big deal out of this if I think other vendors may have this capability?  Because this is what a lot of customers have been asking for for a long time.

In previous versions of Veeam, you couldn’t do any sort of backup rotation.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  It would be more accurate to say that there wasn’t any built-in functionality for doing GSF rotation, and their support forums have a number of hacks that add this capability by using PowerShell or recommending multiple backup jobs on varying schedules to handle this.

By setting up GFS rotation and building it into a new method for utilizing offsite storage, Veeam has built a powerful tool for backing up virtual environments and ensuring that your data is safely protected offsite without having to break the bank on expensive backup storage.