NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6 was released with some interesting features. Most are minor features, but there is one very huge and almost unique: it support native backup and replication of Amazon EC2 instances!

Considering that Amazon EC2 is one of the most popular public compute cloud, which enables customers to rapidly deploy and run cloud-based instances.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6 is one of the first to provide native backup and replication of Amazon EC2 instances and features:

• Support for VMware and Amazon cloud environments in the single pane of glass
• Scheduled, forever incremental backup of EC2 instances to a backup repository which can be located anywhere: in the same Amazon region, in a different Amazon region, or in a local office
• Flexible backup retention policy, which enables saving up to 1,000 recovery points for each backup and rotating them on the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis
• Support for live applications and databases of Windows-based and Linux-based Amazon EC2 instances
• Global data deduplication and compression
• Instant file and application objects recovery, full instance recovery to any region
• Native EC2 instance replication to the same region or cross regions for disaster recovery

This is something really interesting and really useful considering that NAKIVO Backup & Replication performs application-aware backup of Windows-based and Linux-based AWS EC2 instances. Also NAKIVO Backup & Replication automatically deduplicates all AWS EC2 backups across entire backup repository. On top of that, deduplicated blocks are compressed to ensure that the least amount of space is used by the backup repository.

Can be also used for DR purpose using AWS EC2 instance replication that creates and maintains identical copies of your AWS EC2 instances (aka replicas). You can replicate instances within the same region or cross-regions. For each instance replica, you can save up to 30 recovery points. In case source instances are lost or damaged, you can instantly recover by powering on instance replicas.

Another interesting new features is the Backup Copy jobs that provide a simple yet powerful way to create and maintain copies of backups, which can be stored anywhere: onsite, offsite, or in Amazon cloud. Backup Copy jobs copy backups from one backup repository to another, without touching the source ESXi hosts or source VMs/Amazon EC2 instances. This way source VMs/Amazon EC2 Instances are read only once, while backups can be copied to one or multiple locations. In addition, Backup Copy jobs have their own schedule and backup retention policy, which means that customers can run backup copies whenever they want and copy what they want to a secondary backup repository. This way, for example, customers can store several daily VM backups onsite, and keep (archive) weekly, monthly, and yearly copies of VM backups to a secondary backup repository for long term storage. This isn’t something news (other products have a similar features, or also with the same name, from several years), but it’s interesting that can be used also to Amazon EC2 instances.

Considering the different features that are implemented and the cross-platform nature of NAKIVO (it can run both on Windows and Linux, for all the compoments), is strange that hasn’t been acquired by some secondary storage vendors: it’s already possible integrate this solutions in some storage appliance (actually focused on SMB) like Synology or WD disks, but how cool can be integrate it on enterprise solutions solutions like Rubrik or Cohesity.

Andrea Mauro

Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.