Nakivo Backup & Replication v7.2 Beta Now Available

Recent Nakivo Backup & Replication announced Nakivo Backup & Replication v7.2 Beta  which is now available to download with lot of cool new features and functionalities like.

Asustor NAS Support

With Asustor NAS Support we can turn ASUSTOR NAS into a VM backup appliance, which help us to offload VMware or Hyper- V Infrastructure to a low cost NAS and to  keep our backup software,hardware, storage, and data deduplication within the same device like we have  been doing with QNAP, SYNOLOGY and Western Digital NAS.

Transaction Log Truncation for Microsoft SQL Server

Another feature that has been made available in Nakivo Backup & Replication v7.2 Beta which can automatically truncate transaction log files post successful Virtual Machine Backup or replica is created, preventing log files from growing.

Instant Object Recovery for Microsoft SQL

With this feature we can instantly recover SQL objects (database and tables) directly from compressed deduplicated VM Backups, when working on recovery of the objects we can recover the objects back to SQL Server or to a different SQL Server.

Flexible Job Scheduler

Enhancements has been made in Job Scheduling which helps us to add multiple schedules to single job, allowing us to run a single job at different times for example on weekday and weekend wherein we can make the Job to run on Weekdays in night when we have less workload and at the same time we don't have to run the same job in night on weekend because of less workload we can run it in day time as we may have less work load over weekend.

Calendar Dashboard

With this new feature we can view all your jobs on a calendar like your meetings and quickly find free slots in a backup window like we make use of scheduling assistant for our meetings. This feature also helps us to schedule new jobs from the calendar by providing a birds-eye view for all our jobs. To make this feature even more useful, calendars are integrated right into the job wizard, so you can schedule a job right in the job wizard.

Download your free trial here Try Nakivo Backup & Replication v7.2 Beta

10 Things we need to know - Vembu Cloud

I have already dedicated couple of articles talking about Vembu BDR wherein we have discussed about Top 5 reasons to choose Vembu BDR, Product Review Vembu BDR and we have also seen how we can Replicate Virtual Machine using Vembu BDR.

Dedicated this article to talk about 10 Important points we need to know about Vembu cloud services wherein we will be talking about Vembu CloudDR, Vembu Online Backup, Vembu SaaS Backup and Vembu BDR360.

• Vembu CloudDR provide an extra data protection to the backed-up data by replicating the backed-up data to Vembu Cloud hosted in AWS, it also gives us an option to create a redundant copy of the backed-up data from multiple backup servers to Vembu cloud storage. In a case of backup server crash or hardware failure or any other disaster, the replicated data which is highly secure as it uses AES 256-Bit encryption can be restored from the Vembu cloud anywhere and anytime.
• Vembu CloudDR services can be availed on a Pay-as-you go basis with 10GB of free storage with its availability in various regions including America, Asia Pacific and EMEA and it also gives us multiple options to restore including live VM boot on Vembu cloud, restoring via the internet anytime anywhere, and we can also download the restored data to USB drive.
• Vembu Online Backup provides end-to-end secure backup for Windows, Linux & Mac Machines and applications like Exchange, SharePoint and SQL and is designed to meet compliance requirements based on local regulatory laws.
• With Vembu Online Backup we can backup individual files and folders on Windows, Linux and Mac Machines irrespective of the fact whether they are hosted in virtual or physical environment, these files can be backed-up without any restriction in terms of size and the type of folders we have planned for backup.
• When using the Vembu Online Backup for Microsoft SQL backup we can make use of MS SQL plugin which can help us to backup critical database and tables to Vembu Cloud and an entire SQL server can be recreated directly from Vembu Cloud.

• When working with Vembu Online Backup administrators get a variety of scheduling options to choose from depending upon the requirements on how frequently the backups needs to be performed, as far as the retention of the backed-up data is concerned we can choose from either time-based retention or version based retention.
• It’s time to consider another service which is part of Vembu Cloud and provides us backup solution for Office 365 and Google Apps, Vembu SaaS backup provides us secure cloud backup for backing up emails, drives, calendar, and contacts in office 365 environments.
• Vembu SaaS backup is much needed to avoid any potential data loss for our business which can happen because of Hacking, unauthorised access and data loss as it provides us various features including Automated Scheduling (Runs Backup on Daily Basis), Quick Search (Search email’s, documents and contacts while configuring the backup).
• With Vembu SaaS backup we can download our backed-up google documents with single click means there is no need to restore the user account to access the file irrespective of the location and time.
• Another solution available as part of Vembu Cloud is Vembu BDR 360, which provides us centralized management and monitoring portal to have a better visibility of our IT infrastructure currently backed-up by Vembu Backup and Disaster recovery solutions, with Vembu BDR 360 we can get a 360 degree birds eye view for all our Virtual Machines, Physical Servers, Applications and all the endpoints being protected by Vembu BDR suite.

Back to Basics - Part 2 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud aka EC2

As we have recently started another Back to Basics Series for AWS related blog posts, this is our second blog post dedicated toward the series. In our first blog post Back to Basics - Part 1 An Introduction to Amazon Web Services we had a quick overview about AWS and also talked about the various associate and professional level certifications available, dedicated this article to talk about Amazon EC2.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Is one of the most widely used web service which provides us resizable compute capacity and helps us to reduces the overall time which is required to obtain and boot new Amazon EC2 instance to minutes.Security is not a problem because we can make use of security groups and network access lists to control the incoming/outgoing connections of our instances.

When launching an EC2 Instance the initial software that run's on it is known as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) which includes operating system, application or system software. While working with AMI there are various options available to us to choose from including the one which is Published by AWS with different versions of operating system (Windows and Linux), The AWS Marketplace an online store where we can find the desired software from different vendors which will be running on our EC2 instance, we can also generate an Amazon Machine Image from an existing instance last but not the least we can also make us of AWS Import/Export Service and can create images which could be VMDK, VHD or OVA. 

When it comes to buying an EC2 Instance there are various options available to choose from depending upon the load/traffic/requirements.

On Demand Instance let us pay for compute capacity on an hourly basis and we can increase or decrease compute capacity depending on the demands of our application and can considered as one good option when we are planning to run our application for the very first time on AWS.

Reserved Instances will gives us the assurance of the instances which will always be available for us in the availability zone, including a discounted price as compared to the On demand Instance. When choosing our reserved instance we have three different options to choose from i.e All Upfront - Where we are paying for the entire reservation upfront, Partial Upfront - Paying small charges upfront and remaining as monthly instalments and the last option is No Upfront - Nothing to be paid in advance rather in monthly instalments.

Spot Instances allows us to specify the maximum hourly price which we are willing to pay to run a particular instance type. Amazon EC2 sets a Spot Price for each instance type in each Availability Zone, which is the price all customers will pay to run a Spot instance for that given period. One of the use case for spot instance could be the workloads which are not time critical wherein we can specify the price we are willing to pay and when our bid price is above the current spot price will receive the requested instance.

Dedicated Hosts as the name suggest is the EC2 Server with the overall capacity to be utilized by us and helping us reduce costs by using our existing server-bound software licenses, including Windows Server, SQL Server, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (subject to your license terms), and can also meet compliance requirements.

Back to Basics - Part 1 An Introduction to Amazon Web Services

Spending time these days to learn about Amazon Web Services and as part of this journey trying to make some notes for my own reference which I can refer while preparing for the AWS certifications, so thought of making these notes available on my blog as a series of blog posts and named them as Back to Basics - Amazon Web Services Part 1, Part 2 and so on as I have been doing it for VMware Back to Basics Series.

Will start this Back to Basics Series blog - Part 1 For Amazon Web Services by giving a quick overview about Amazon Web Services and the various certifications available depending upon our areas of interest (Architect, Developer or SysOps).

Overview Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services is the infrastructure service (Compute + Network) which can be leveraged with storage and other services offered by Amazon that helps us to deploy services own demand without worrying about the underlying infrastructure as now we don't have to wait for the underlying hardware to be procured, rack/stack, install and configure it, with Amazon Web Services we can choose from a wide variety of services and spin them up in minutes.

Elastic Computing is the Key when working with AWS which allows us to Grow or reduce  in minutes not just the compute resources but the storage resources as well, we can also choose from various storage choice available and do tiering (Fast + Medium and Low Performance) as we have been doing in an on - premises environment.

When it comes to accessing the AWS environment we can make use of the AWS Management Console (Web Application for managing AWS Cloud Services), the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI to manage and automate cloud services) or AWS Software Development Kit (SDK) (Application programming interface that interacts with AWS Web Services).

As a matter of fact there are lot of services to talk about and will be trying my level best to dedicate article in Back to Basics - AWS series for each service type and demonstrate how to create/ manage those services, I have already setup my account on AWS and long back dedicated an article talking about Amazon EC2 Instance which falls under compute category, maybe i will change the heading of that post and make it as Back to Basics Part 2 - AWS EC2 Instance ensuring all the AWS Back to Basics Series blog posts are properly aligned.

AWS Certification

It's time to check various certification tracks available with AWS and believe me if you are some one who is starting his journey with AWS like me I would strongly recommend you to have some understanding about Virtualization, Cloud Computing ,Networking and Storage so as you to enjoy this Journey.

As we can see there are various tracks which are available to us depending upon our areas of interest, we can design the AWS infrastructure (AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate and Professional), or we could be the one who is going to manage the services and troubleshoot it (AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate and AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional), another track is available for those who are from Development Background (AWS Certified Developer Associate and AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional), yes we need to have both the admin skills and development related skills if we are planning to achieve professional level certification for both development and operations track.

Amazon Web Services also offers speciality certifications which can be done after we have have completed an Associate Certification in any of the roles, wherein we can may progress to a Specialty in Advanced Networking or Big Data, depending upon the areas of interest.

Important Links -

AWS Documentation

AWS Certification

How to Prepare For your AWS Certification

AWS Cloud Services Pricing

AWS TCO Calculators

AWS Monthly Calculator

AWS Free Tier