What’s new in version 7.6 of Altaro VM Backup

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Altaro just released a new version of their popular Altaro VM Backup and below is a list of what's new.

Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

With Altaro VM Backup 7.6, users can switch from running daily backups to a continuous data protection model yielding an improved Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of up to 5 minutes.

When CDP is enabled, VMs can be backed up as frequently as every 5 minutes or the maximum frequency permitted by the backup location and environment. This ensures that in a data loss scenario only a few minutes of data would be lost.

This dramatically reduces the Recovery Point Objective (RPO). RPO is the point in time to which VMs are restored by a backup solution in case of a disaster. With CDP in place, users’ RPO is optimized to up to 5 minutes, instead of the hours of data loss faced in cases where users are simply running daily backups.

NOTE: CDP is currently only available for Hyper-V; it will become available for VMware soon

Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) Archiving

Altaro VM Backup 7.6 introduces GFS, enabling users to choose to archive the backup versions over and above their continuous and daily backups instead of deleting them (local backups only).

Now you can easily set up separate backup cycles to store a new backup version every week, every month and every year.

Normal Retention Policy:

• High frequency CDP Backups for 4 hours
• A maximum of one backup an hour until the Retention Policy ends

With GFS Archiving enabled, Altaro VM Backup also keeps the following backups, with the time periods shown all starting from the time of the last successful backup:

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

CBT v2 for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2

CBT refers to Change Block Tracking and allows users to take fast incremental backups without having to scan the entire virtual machine (VM) for changes each time. This can reduce backup duration down from hours to minutes. When CBT is not available, a lengthy full scan for changes is required.

This release addresses an issue in Altaro VM Backup 7 CBT for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 where CBT is disabled and a full scan for changes is required in the following scenarios:

• Altaro VM Backup or one of the Hyper-V Host agents is updated
• Altaro VM Backup services or one of the Hyper-V Host agents is restarted
• A Hyper-V Host is restarted
• A Virtual Machine on a Failover Cluster migrates between nodes.

Altaro VM Backup 7.6 addresses this and the above scenarios do not require that a full scan is taken.

 

Link to KB Article: http://support.altaro.com/customer/portal/articles/2918930

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. This caused the following pain points for our users:

• If a retention policy takes quite long to complete then backups and restore operations are queued until retention is complete
• If an Offsite Copy to Azure takes days to complete, especially for the initial backup; then backups and restore operations for that VM are queued until it is complete
• If a Restore, File Level Restore or Boot from Backup operation is active then no backups for that Virtual Machine could take place until they are completed.

Each of these limitations have been addressed in v7.6 , allowing users to restore and take Offsite Copies without delaying any scheduled or CDP backups whether scheduled or CDP.

 

Link to KB Article: http://support.altaro.com/customer/portal/articles/2925967

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cheers

niall