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Vembu Network Backup For SQL Server

Vembu Network Backup is one of the valuable features of Vembu BDR suite and its role is to perform backup and recovery for individual files and applications on Windows or Linux machines. In this post, I will be explaining about Vembu Network Backup features and how to configure backup and restore for MS SQL Application using Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1 Update1 . Vembu Network Backup supports backup of MySQL databases tables with Full and incremental mode .Backup can be performed for MySQL databases even when the data is online and is still being accessible by other other applications.

Supported Operating Systems

Microsoft	Linux	Mac
Windows Server 2008 ,2012 & 2016 (64-bit)	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and later	10.5.x (Leopard)
Windows SBS 2003, 2008 & 2011	Debian Linux 5.0 and later	10.6.x (SnowLeopard)
Windows XP SP2 and above (64-bit)	CentOS 5.2 and later	10.7 (Lion) for Intel PCs & above
	Fedora 11 and later
	Ubuntu 10.04 and later

Supported Microsoft SQL Version

Microsoft SQL Server 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008, 2005, 2000

Vembu Network Backup Features

Backup and Restores Files /Folders
Backup System State, Active Directory & Registry
Backup and Restore Applications - MS Exchange, MS SQL Server, SharePoint and Outlook
Backup and Restore can be managed from Single Console
Encryption and Compression
Disaster recovery

More Detailed Feature Information

Refer Release Notes for Known Issues & Limitations

Configuring SQL Backup

Setup is running with below details

Vembu - BDR 3.9.1 Update 1 Version
Database - Microsoft SQL 2012

To configure the SQL backup first you have to download the Vembu Network Backup Client from BDR console

Download the Backup Client from the available versions , here I am using Windows client

Run the downloaded Application

Click Next to Start the installation from Setup Wizard

Accept the License Agreement and Click Next

Provide the Network Backup ID and Click Next

Note :- You can add custom value for ID or default one which is Host Name or recommended option

Choose the Typical Option and Click Next

Note:- You my Choose Custom Option set the different configuration parameters

Click Install to start the installation on the Client Machine

Click Finish to exit from from installer and start the Network Backup Application

Since we selected Open the Vembu NetworkBackup Web Console it will open a console and you have provide the IP / Hostname and Click on Connect or You can connect the Network Console from Shortcut created on Desktop

Once Connected you can see message as Connected Successfully to the Server ( Hostname )

You have login to the Console with default username and password

From the Console navigate to Backup -> MS SQL Serer

Add the SQL Serer Instance and Click Next

Note:-You can use Windows Authentication or SQL Authentication , also don't use sa user for configure backup as best practice create and use separate login for Instance or add Windows secured users with required permission ( backup administrator) .

You have different options for configure backup , this console will show all database and option available for backup .

Here I choose Select all Data Base and Click Next

Select the Schedule you need to configure , Select Backup Server , Retention period and Click Next

You have additional Scheduling options available , also you can configure custom Temporary Location for backup dumps and encryption , Click Next to Continue

Enter A Job Name for this and you can select the option to Run backup immediately after this backup configuration

Also you can review the configuration form same window and click on Save the Backup

From the Popup message click on Yes to complete backup configuration

You Can view the backup Progress by navigating to Backup - > List of Backup Jobs and Selecting Arrow From status option on the Windows .

Note : - After configuring the backup and ran the backup same time this window will open after the configuration completion step.

Restore SQL Database

Vembu Network has advanced options for restoring , find the below available options

Restore directly to SQL Instance
Restore to Custom Location
Move the Restore Data from Custom Location to SQL Instance

Navigate to Restore and Select the backup job which you need to restore , in this scenario I am using SQL Backup Job

Click on Restore OPtion

Note :- You can choose Restore the data from Backup server or Previous restored data from Custom Location to SQL server

Select Restore data from backup server and Click Yes to continue

Select below details and select the Type of backup you want to restore by selecting check box then Click Next

Database Name from Drop Down
Show backups after - available backups taken after this period
Enter the Location to Restore the Data

Next Select the appropriate option as you have to restore data to SQL Click Next

You will have two option to do same find below

Automatically Restore Data to SQL server database :-

This option will let you to restore data into SQL Server database, where you will have the option to either overwrite an existing database or restore as separate database.

Restore data to the Local Disk only :-

This option will restore data in a separate custom location instead restoring data into SQL Server.

Select the required recovery state option and Click Next to Proceed , you will have three options available

Leave database in ready-to-use state by rolling back uncommitted transactions.Additional transaction logs cannot be restored (Restore with recovery).
Leave database non-operational, and do not rollback uncommitted transactions.Additional transaction logs can be restored (Restore with Non-Recovery).
Leave database in read-only mode. Undo uncommitted transactions, but save undo action in a standby file so that recovery effects can be reversed (Restore with Standby).

Note:- Password protected- If backup is password protected, enter the correct password to proceed with restore.

Note:- If you use Restore data to the Local Disk , only one option will be available for restore as shown below

Review the configuration and Select Restore Now to trigger restore

From the Restore this Backup Popup message , Click Yes to start the restore process

You can review the restore progress and verify restore completed .

Navigate to from Reports -> Restore Reports to check detailed verification of restore process by clicking on Job Name

Restore Report Start Time 3:20 Shows Automatically Restore Result and Start Time 23:13 shows the Restore Data to the Local Disk Only Result

Refer Vembu Networkbackup Guide

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by Rajesh Radhakrishnan

Vembu BDR 3.9.1 Update 1 Supports vSphere 6.7

Vembu has release an update for BDR version 3.9.1 which supports VMware latest version vSphere 6.7 .When Vembu released BDR 3.9.1 with their started version for SMB customers it was not included support for vSphere 6.7 and it was one of the big missing part.

Vembu really understand what customer required so they are able to release an update so quickly to overcome this missing support feature and now Vembu BDR Suite 3.9.1 Update 1 supports vSphere 6.7 and is generally available (GA) and ready for download.

In my previous posts of Vembu, I have shared features available with Vembu BDR Suite, so in this post I am not going explain about them again and here I am sharing my validation of vSphere 6.7 support in Vembu BDR 3.9.1 Update 1. Moreover, this is only a maintenance release so they there is no new features announced with this update.

Environment Details

Below are the ESXi Server details in my vSphere 6.7 Lab.

Host Name	IP Address	ESXi Version	vCenter Version
TEST-ESX1.VMARENA.COM	192.168.1.21	6.7	6.7
TEST-ESX2.VMARENA.COM	192.168.1.22	6.7
TEST-ESX3.VMARENA.COM	192.168.1.23	6.7
TEST-ESX4.VMARENA.COM	192.168.1.24	6.7

I have configured vSAN data store on this setup to deploy virtual machines and backup repository is vSAN iSCSI Target storage with size of 50 GB. Vembu BDR 3.9.1. Update1 installed on Windows 2012 R2 Operating System.

vSphere Version

Configure vSphere 6.7 Host on Vembu BDR server

Verify Vembu BDR Version

Login to the Vembu BDR server Console using “https://FQDN:6060” or “https://ipaddress:6060“ from any machine you can access the Vembu BDR Server.

Navigate to Help -> About US

Note: - You may access the console from BDR server also, this image has taken on that scenario.

Add vSphere 6.7 to Vembu Server

From Main Tab Select VM Replication -> VMware vSphere option

Click on Add VMware vSphere Server -> Enter ESXi host IP and Credential and Click Save

Server will be add and you may see a popup message as “server added successfully”.

And from List VMware Server Option you can view added vSphere servers

Configure the Backup and Test

In one of the ESXi server added to Vembu BDR server contains a Windows 7 64-bit Machine, which is stored on vSAN data store, here I will configure the image backup of this machine and run the backup to verify the vSphere 6.7 support on Vembu BDR 3.9.1 Update 1

Vembu BDR provides efficient Deduplication to backup data, which will help to save the cost on bandwidth and storage space.

Select the Backup option from the added VMware Servers and Select the virtual machine need to configure the back up and click Next

Click Next to Continue with all default values

Note: - If you have any application like exchange available on the server you have select the Application Aware Process

Select the Schedule for the backup and click Next

Configure the required retention for this backup and click next

Enter a Backup Job name and select the checkbox of Run this Job Immediately after saving

Review that all steps are verified Vembu Server by a tick on the left side of each option.

Click on the Save the backup Option and there will be pop-up message, Click OK to continue by confirming that backup Schedule has completed.

You can View the Configured backup Job from backup -> List all Jobs Option

Click on Status Up Arrow under status tab and you can review the progress of the backup .

You can check the backup report from Reports -> Backup Status Report Option

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by Rajesh Radhakrishnan

What's New With Vembu BDR Suite Free edition

Vembu is focusing more in to Small and Medium Businesses with a reasonable price to fulfil their all requirements. BDR suite v3.9.1 has three versions Free, Standard which is new with this release and Enterprise. In this post, I am going to discuss about the new free version of the Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1.

For every Organization even if it is small, medium or large Data is very important. If they lose their data business will get impacted, so data protection is Critical one .Most of the SMB’s does not have data protection it’s because of many are not aware about the impact of data loss and many due to their limited budget.

Vembu offers a free solution that would address the needs backups for the organizations do not have a backup strategy. You can configure multiple backup and restore jobs, with no feature restriction for three VMs without the need of purchasing any license. The free edition of Vembu BDR Suite will work smoothly with a set of Critical features that are part other paid versions and the free version is free forever.

Vembu BDR free edition will be the right fit for your Small business, if you do not have a Backup and DR plan in place, let’s find what Vembu Free edition offers to protect the data for Business Continuity.

Unlimited Agentless backups

Vembu VMBackup is on the feature, which offers Agentless Backup solution to protect the VMware vSphere ESXi, vCenter VMs and Microsoft Hyper-V VMs. Vembu VMBackup uses VMware vStorage APIs (VADP) feature to perform the agentless backup and a proprietary driver along with the Microsoft VSS technology in Hyper-V

Agentless backup reduces the efforts involved in installing the agent on each VMs and Backup and recovery configurations are simple since they are directly performs from Vembu BDR Server Web Console. This Web Console is very user friendly and you can manage backup, recovery, storage and reporting from a single pane.

High Availability

Vembu achieve the high availability by providing Near CDP (Continuous Data Protection) with an RTO and RPO of less than 15 minutes .Recovery options available in VMBackup are quick enough to keep data centers up and running with minimal downtime with near zero data loss. Also you can recover the physical and virtual infrastructure on VMware, Hyper-V or KVM platforms using Vembu Quick VM Recovery feature from image-based backups.

Encryption

Backup of your data always required but really backed up data secure, since backup is falling under Data Protection and data is transferring through network. Vembu Free Edition Offers encryption to Organization for secure the backing up data.You can create a custom password for backup jobs that enables AES 256 bit encryption which encrypts the backup data .

This feature provides a second layer of protection to customers by preventing accidental deletion of data and authority of it .You can recover or delete the backup’s jobs only after providing their respective passwords of the backup jobs.

Compression

Vembu BDR provides built-in compression feature to save storage consumption. You will save lot of space on the storage by compression and data size is less compare to the actual size of data. Backed up data is compressed then stored on the BDR server due to this traffic and time take taken to transfer the data from the client to the server is decreases.

Application-aware Backup

Vembu BDR Free edition achieving application-aware backup using Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Vembu VMBackup provides deep VSS integration to deliver application aware backup to ensure skipping of applications in a non-consistent state.

Vembu BDR server makes sure that consistent backups for Microsoft Applications like Exchange, SharePoint, Active Directory and SQL. Also, have an additional option to truncate the transaction logs for MS Exchange and MS SQL.

How Vembu Ensure the Consistency?

Vembu BDR solution has feature to pauses or “quiesces” the disk I/O until the writers of the applications become stable and then process further backup. This is performed in two steps which is included snapshot creation of application and Volume Shadow Copy Service to allow volume backups to performed while applications on a system continue to write to the volumes

Initially, a VSS request will be triggered followed by which a consistent backup for applications is initiated by Microsoft VSS before initiating a snapshot for that application. And there are no unfinished transactions that remain uncopied to the application database

Changed Block Tracking (CBT)

CBT is the technology used in Vembu BDR to track modified data blocks details of a backed up virtual machine to provide efficient storage utilization. After every full backup CBT will do this process and it will reduce backup widow as well as the storage consumption by backing up only the changes instead of full backup.

VMBackup for VMware vSphere & vCenter used the VMware’s CBT to modified blocks for incremental backup.
Hyper-V using Vembu’s proprietary CBT for tracking backed up blocks and process an incremental backup.

Disk Management Mount

This is an interesting functionality of Vembu BDR free edition, which helps the users to recover the data from the disks of the virtual machines. This is an efficient recovery feature in the Vembu VMBackup for VMware and Hyper-V to get the data restored in few seconds.

Backed up virtual machines disk is being mounted on the local Vembu BDR server and users can access the files and folders that are residing in it quickly.

Quick VM Recovery

Vembu BDR free edition has a wonder feature called Quick VM Recovery .It is an instant recovery method used at the time of an unexpected disaster happened, which helps to reduce the downtime. Vembu is capable of recovering backup data instantly on either VMware or Hyper-V directly from storage targets, which is still compressed and encrypted. Moreover, the changes that are made during the quick boot session are also tracked and stored in the backup repository that might be used at times of permanent recovery.

Supports Various Storage Devices

Vembu VMBackup for VMware and Hyper-V supports multiple storage devices of different file systems be it local drives, NAS, SAN, iSCSI, VSAN iSCSI Target, Tapes etc. And it is flexible configure these devices pooled into multiple storage pools as well , this will help admins to add new storage volume /device to the existing pool on the fly if they run out of storage.

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by Rajesh Radhakrishnan

Vembu BDR Suite Review

Vembu is a leading software provider in the market since 2002 and recognized in market for data protection solutions. Vembu has various products and cloud services for small and medium businesses, which is cost effective and very convenient for customers. Vembu is more focusing on service provider level and Data Centers of Small, Medium Businesses and Vembu have 60000+ clients in worldwide through 4000+ service providers.

In this review, I will share essentials features of BDR Suite that helps decision makers to understand more on Vembu BDR Suite. First let’s check what Vembu Offers for IT Organizations to protect their data. Vembu provides various solutions and products to IT Organizations at reasonable price. Find the below details

Vembu Solutions

Vembu offers various solutions for your Organization, find the below solution details which is reliable and cost effective.

Vembu Products

Vembu has various products for your Infrastructure, find the below product details which is very suitable for your requirements.

Vembu as released their latest version BDR Suite v3.9.1, which is available in three editions: Free, Standard and Enterprise. Prior to old versions Vembu had Standard Edition in this release, which focused on SMB’s with a reasonable price.
Vembu BDR Suite - Free Edition is suitable for both virtual environments like VMware, Hyper-V and also for physical environments. It is free forever and does not have major restrictions.

Vembu BDR Suite - Standard Edition is designed and priced in a way to deliver a simple and cost-effective data protection solution for the Small and Medium businesses running their business critical servers in the virtual environment of VMware & Hyper-V.

Also, Vembu offers a flat 50% discount with Vembu VMBackup for Small and Mid-sized businesses that sustain with environments upto 6 CPU sockets.

Vembu BDR Suite is a collection of software products for organization’s backup and disaster recovery requirements. Vembu BDR Suite protects the business data hosted in both physical and virtual environment and supports deployment in on-premise, offsite and Cloud location.

Vembu BDR Suite provides complete, hassle-free Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) solution for both physical and virtual environments. Vembu has centralized monitoring and management portal, which makes customers to monitor and manage deployments very easy.

I will share the overview of what Vembu BDR suite offering

● Vembu VMBackup

VMBackup is a backup and disaster recovery solution for the virtualized data centers. It supports both the VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments. Vembu VMBackup includes Agentless Backup & Replication of VMware VMs, Host Level Hyper-V VM Backup, CBT enabled Incremental backup and application-aware backup processing. Also it support Cross Platform Migration , download the backed up files in different formats VHD, VHDX, VMDK, VMDK-FLAT and RAW, can be used for V2V and V2P .

● Vembu ImageBackup

Vembu ImageBackup is designed to protect the physical windows servers and endpoints to cater the data protection needs of businesses which are still running Physical windows machine in their IT environment. You can schedule backup in every 15 minute to get an RPO and support recovery less than RTO of 15 minutes. Bare-metal Recovery also possible with Vembu that supports restoration of an entire Windows system from scratch to same or new hardware using Vembu Recovery CD.

● Vembu NetworkBackup & Vembu OnlineBackup

Network Backup will protect all your critical data across file servers, application servers, and Windows, Linux, and Mac workstations. It has the capability to do backup of Exchange Server and Mailboxes, SQL, Sharepoint, Active Directory & Registry Backups, SystemState. Vembu has a MS Outlook plugin, which protects your Outlook data completely. In addition, Vembu has OnlineBackup Capability, which can perform same network backup operations, but the data is directly transferred and stored on the Vembu Cloud.

● Vembu OffsiteDR & Vembu CloudDR

Vembu OffsiteDR replicates the backed up data from the local backup server to the DR server. In case of any disaster and data loss in primary location, you can restore the replicated data from the OffsiteDR. This process is same like restoring the data from backup server and then the entire infrastructure can be rebuilt easily.

CloudDR offers same functionality of OffsiteDR, the only change is, instead of DR Local server the backup data will be transferred to Vembu Cloud. And, you can restore your data from anytime anywhere via the internet and the restored data can be downloaded to USB drive and shipped.

● Vembu SaaSBackup

SaaS Backup provides a secure cloud backup solution with different recovery options for Office 365 (including OneDrive) and Google Apps (now G Suite). It backs up the Mails, Drives, Calendar and Contacts of your Office 365 and Google Apps. Users can backup and recover their Google Apps data anytime and anywhere, it allows users to access their files without the need to restore to the user account.
You can check the detailed Product details on Vembu Product-datasheets

Why VMBackup?

Answer is very simple! If your data is on VM, we need a backup of that and as we know that most of the companies are running their business application and Infrastructure server’s top of VMware vSphere/Hyper-V environment to achieve the benefits like cost savings, minimal downtime, better resource distribution etc.
VMware has inbuilt snapshot functionality to backup the VMs, even if we say backup it is not a complete backup solution. Snapshots are just state of a virtual machine at any specific point in time can be preserved. Never keep the snapshot longer period since it will consume more storage as well as degrade the performance of VM. So we need proper backup solution to keep our data safe, secure to prevent a failure.

Why Vembu VMBackup?

Normally Backup solutions are more expensive and difficult to manage because most of the solutions focused on larger organization Level. But Vembu BDR Suite is very suitable for Small and Medium Business with all the relevant features. Vembu VMBackup is the most cost effective Backup and Disaster Recovery software, which offers Backup and Replication for VMware Platform and Host level Backup for Hyper-V VMs with a reasonable price.

Key Features

● Agentless VMware and Hyper-V Backup
● Host level Hyper-V Backup
● VM Replication for High Availability
● RPO and RTO less than 15 minutes
● CBT enabled incremental data
● Supports VMware vSphere version 4 to 6.5 which includes VMware Virtual Volumes and Virtual SAN
● Supports Backup of Hyper-V VMs on SMB and CSV
● Backup-level encryption
● Quick VM Recovery
● Application-Aware Image Backups
● Vembu HIVE File System, a File System of File Systems for efficient backup storage
● Vembu Universal Explorer for Microsoft Exchange, SQL, Active Directory and SharePoint

More Information is available on Vembu-VMBackup

Vembu ImageBackup

Vembu’s products and solutions has many common key features available with different backup types, you can explore those feature while you explore more with Vembu BDR Suite. Vembu ImageBackup supports image-level backup of Windows operating systems that includes Microsoft Windows 7 and above Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 and above Microsoft Windows SBS 2008 & 2011

Key Features

Bare-metal Recovery (BMR)

Using Vembu Recovery CD, IT admins can restore the backed up Windows Servers and Workstations to the same or different hardware.

Vembu Virtual Drive

Instantly recover all the Windows Servers and Workstations running in ESXi host or Hyper-V server by mounting Vembu Virtual Drive as datastore using NFS share. It helps to recover the entire data center during major disaster

Vembu Explorer for Microsoft Exchange

Instantly restore Exchange user mailboxes, emails, contacts etc. without restoring entire Exchange server machine

Vembu Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server

Instantly restore SQL database and tables without restoring entire SQL server machine

Vembu Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint

Instantly restore SharePoint site connections and documents without restoring entire SharePoint server machine

Vembu Explorer for Microsoft Active Directory

Instantly restore Active Directory objects and GPOs etc. without restoring entire Active Directory server machine

Bandwidth Throttling

It enables the user to limit the bandwidth used by the backup process during data transfer. If you do not want to spend your entire bandwidth on backups, use this feature to control or limit the bandwidth.

More Information Available on Vembu ImageBackup

by Rajesh Radhakrishnan

Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1 Released

Vembu BDR Suite is a complete solution designed to protect organization critical data. Vembu announced their latest BDR Suite version 3.9.1, which include Standard Edition appropriate for small business (SMBs) at very affordable pricing.

Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1 is now available in three editions: Free, Standard and Enterprise .Compare all available features between the versions from Vembu and choose the solutions suit for your business needs.

Standard edition of Vembu BDR Suite supports unlimited VM backup, fast VM recovery, Instant file recovery, granular recovery and much more and using these features BDR will protect Organization entire virtual IT infrastructure. Some top features is missing with version but for a SMB’s this version suitable and fulfilling their requirement with an affordable price.

Additionally new Standard Edition also offers built-in compression, deduplication, and security features using AES-256 encryption algorithm.

Key Features of Vembu VM Backup Standard Edition

Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1 edition released with significant enhancements and bug fixes to improve performance and availability.

Vembu Standard Edition Pricing

This time Vembu comprehensively validated the customer requirements and decided to offer features to fulfill SMB’s requirement at a reasonable price.

Pricing for Standard Edition of VMware Backup at $ 216/CPU-socket per annum. If you planning to add more servers soon or the requirement comes under 6 CPU sockets, Vembu offers an additional discount of 50% and you have great saving .You have to pay only $ 108/CPU-socket per annum.

The Standard Edition for Hyper-V Backup also has reasonable price $ 144/CPU-socket per annum. More over above-mentioned discount category is available here also, only $ 72/CPU-socket per annum.

More on pricing details visit Vembu Pricing

Download Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1 and experience the best modern data protection for your environment.

by Rajesh Radhakrishnan