Veeam B&R v8 – “Little things mean a lot” (part 2/2)

* Note: This is the second (and last) part of the post. Read part 1 here.

In the previous post I wrote about 5 small, but quite nice nonetheless, new features and improvements of Veeam Backup & Replication v8.

Let’s go ahead and finish my list of personal favourites with 5 more!

6. Preferred Networks

It is quite common, especially in larger deployments or infrastructures, to have separate networks for management traffic and backup/replication traffic. In such cases, this feature is really handy, allowing you to easily define the preferred networks to be used for data traffic between Veeam proxies and/or repositories.

v8-preferred-networks

All you have to do is open the “Network Traffic” options (where you can also set throttling rules, if needed) and click the “Networks…” button. You can either use a full subnet mask or CIDR notation.

 

7. Guest OS details in “Virtual Machines” view

When you are browsing your virtual infrastructure, you can now instantly see the operating system of the VMs, as reported by the hypervisor (it’s true for both vSphere and Hyper-V). Quite handy, especially in larger infrastructures again!

v8-guest-os-details

 

8. Repository on disk with largest free space

The first backup repository, automatically created during setup, will now be placed on the disk with the most free space as opposed to the C:\ system drive. This can eliminate the need for a few simple, yet a bit boring, steps to configure the desired location of the backup repository.

v8-default-repo

In the example above, you can see the repository is automatically created in the S: drive, which has roughly 70 GB of free space. The C: drive has only 27 GB free.

 

9. Validator Tool enhancements

The command-line backup validator utility is a powerful – but quite often unknown – tool. Veeam’s EMEA Evangelist, Luca Dell’Oca, has written a good post about it in his blog a while ago.

It can be found in Veeam B&R’s installation folder, which is (by default):

C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Backup\Veeam.Backup.Validator.exe

In v8, it received two major enhancements: support for “stand-alone” backup files (i.e VBM, VBK, VIB, VLB – without needing to import them in the B&R console beforehand) and new options for reports generation.

v8-validator-parameters

The reports are clean-looking and quite complete. They can be generated in either HTML or XML format.

v8-validator-report-html

 

 

10. New database configuration tool

Veeam Backup & Replication v8 adds a nifty graphical tool to edit database connection settings for a Veeam backup server and/or a Veeam Enterprise Manager. Previously, you could “point” the software to a different instance or database via registry keys.

v8-db-config-toolThe tool can be found in the Veeam B&R’s installation folder, which is (by default):

C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Backup\Veeam.Backup.DBConfig.exe

 

 

… And that’s about it! I hope the post was useful… let me know what you think (and/or your favourite new features!) in the comments.

 

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