7 cool features with Altaro VM Backup 7.6

Some time ago we reviewed Altaro backup 6.0. It was first edition to support VMware, a flexible architecture, easy to install and use. Considering its affordable price, these were good reasons to choose Altaro over other solutions.

Altaro developers worked hard meanwhile; the product has reached version 7.6 and its maturity and features keep it on top of a list of choices once it comes to a backup solution for small to medium sized virtual environments.

Let’s detail some features we find most appealing:

1. Augmented In-line Deduplication

It ensures that common blocks of data, both in a singular VMs data and across multiple VMs globally, are transferred and stored on the backup location once.

This results in much lower storage requirements on your backup location, making room for more versions in less storage space. Apart from that, you’ll get faster backup times and less bandwidth used when transferring information on both onsite and offsite locations.

Fig. 1 How in line deduplication works (Altaro support courtesy)

It is important to note that the deduplication is only available with the Unlimited Edition.

2. Continuous Data Protection – CDP

It allows continuous backups (onsite only). The default maximum frequency is 15 minutes per VM but this can be increased to one backup every five minutes. There are some things to consider as for each VM with CDP the next backup will start when the previous one completes:

• your network throughput determines the maximum frequency,
• CDP frequency will be reduced when changes in VMs are big,
• you need enough storage space on your backup location to handle the increased requirement from more frequent backups.

3. 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 due to following limitations:

• backups and restore operations are queued until retention policy is complete,
• backups and restore operations for that VM are queued until offsite copy to cloud it is complete,
• in case of a restore is active then no backups for that Virtual Machine could take place until they are completed.

Starting with Altaro VM Backup 7.6 these limitations have been addressed. That allows users to restore and take offsite copies without delaying any backups whether scheduled or CDP. In addition to that, the retention operation runs four times throughout the day in order to keep the backup repository clean.

4. Altaro VM Backup supports backing up to Azure

Setting up an offsite copy location is as crucial as setting up backups to the primary location. Having a secondary copy of your backup sets also allows you to keep a broader history for your VM backups on your secondary location and you’ll be able to go further back when restoring if required.

Altaro VM backup features multiple options for setting offsite copies:

• physical drive connected to the management console (the best practice for offsites is to have them located in another building/location),
• drive rotation/swap which allows you to set up a pool of drives/network paths,
• a network path (LAN only) or else to an offsite location via a WAN/VPN/internet connection, which is an ideal tool for disaster recovery purposes,
• Altaro VM Backup supports Microsoft Azure Cloud Storage, where users can simply enter their Azure account details and have their offsite copies stored in there.

5. Backup Health Monitor

The backup health monitor feature monitors backup storage for block corruption. If a block corruption is detected, that block gets flagged.

Fig. 2 Backup Health Monitor (Altaro courtesy)

The next time a backup job runs, it checks for flagged blocks. When detected, the backup job will go and grab the affected block from the source workload and replace the bad block inside the backup storage, thus providing a self-healing mechanism, and keeping you safe when you need your backups the most.

6. Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) Archiving

The retention policy has remained the same in 7.6. You can still choose a retention policy (e.g. 2 weeks from the last successful backup) and any backup version older than the retention policy is deleted. However in V7.6, instead of deleting all old versions, you have an option to enable GFS Archival (onsite only) to keep weekly, monthly and yearly backups beyond your retention policy.

Over and above your retention policy, with GFS archiving enabled, Altaro VM Backup will keep:

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

Fig. 3 Setting “Archive Old Backups (GFS)” (Altaro courtesy)

Please note this feature is only available for Unlimited, Unlimited Plus and Subscription users.

7. Boot From Backup

The boot from backup drive feature comes along with 2 options, ‘Verification Mode’ and ‘Recovery Mode’. This is a very good feature for getting your RTO down since you’re able to boot up the VM immediately from a backup location and start a restore on the background concurrently.

However, it’s very important to have a fast backup location that can handle the I/O of a booted VM that’s essentially going into production. Please note that when the VM has finished restoring, it is suggested to restart the restored VM as soon as you get a chance in order to switch to the restored drives, which have faster I/O throughput.

Interested to explore more? Take a free trial for 30 days: Download a free trial of Altaro VM Backup.