The Office of information Technology (OIT) has announced the launch of VEEAM as the new central IT system backup and migration solution for campus. This solution was chosen as part of the build out of Coda as a center for innovation as well as the new data center space to support IT services on campus.

Prior to VEEAM, OIT has used Enterprise Backup Service (EBS) Networker and Bacula as backup solutions. For migration of systems, OIT has used VMware's vCenter solution.  VEEAM allows for migration and backups all in one, which is why it became the solution of choice as new systems are built or migrated into Coda. Current backup solutions such as Bacula or EBS Networker will remain in place for any existing systems until they are fully transitioned to VEEAM. Other benefits of VEEAM include instant VM recovery and its ability to work with a virtual, physical, or cloud environment. 

Other key points for Veeam as a backup service:

• The service is available for OIT and all of campus including Coda.
• Self-service is not available at this time.
• The service will be rolled out in phases. For Phase I, November:
  • Backups and Restores are supported for OIT Managed and OIT Unmanaged Windows Physical and Virtual Machines
    • Replication is not supported for Windows Physical Machines but is supported for Windows VIrtual Machines
  • Backups and Restores are supported for OIT Managed and OIT Unmanaged Linux Physical and Virtual Machine's
    • Replication is not supported for Linux Physical Machines but is supported for Linux Virtual Machines
  • The back up of Hyper-V hosts themselves is not supported at this time
  • The backup of virtual machine guests that reside on a Hyper-V host is not supported at this time
• Cross restores and same server restores are available at this time.
• In order to request backups, restores, or changes to backups, please use the ServiceNow page and click “Enterprise Backup Request Form” under Getting Started/Requirements. Then choose Backups, Restores, or Modification under the “Request“ heading.
  • If you have problems with the form please send e-mail to form-feedback@lists.gatech.edu
  • Servers that are currently being backed up via Networker or Bacula will not be automatically migrated to VEEAM backup.  A new request via the instructions above will need to be made for each machine.
• Systems to be backed up must meet pre-requirements which can be found at this ServiceNow page under Getting Started/Requirements
• For Phase I, backups of SQL Server and Oracle database will not be supported.
• The target for Phase II is late December where more features and capabilities will be added.

As stated, VEEAM will also be used to migrate virtual machines from one environment to another. Currently, OIT's focus is on the migration of Virtual Machine's from Rich to Coda. In order to make requests for migrations, please use the ServiceNow page and click "Enterprise Backup Request Form" under Getting Started/Requirements.  Then choose Replication as part of the drop-down box under the "Request" heading.