Release Information for Veeam Backup & Replication 11a

Veeam Backup & Replication v11a is the newer build of version 11 that addresses issues reported by customers on the original build and adds the following new features and enhancements:

Platform support

• Microsoft Windows Server 2022 and Microsoft Windows 10 21H1 are now supported as guest OS, Hyper-V host, installation of Veeam Backup & Replication components, and agent-based backup with the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 5.0.1 (included in the update).
  
  NOTE: Please avoid upgrading your existing Server 2019 ReFS backup repositories to Server 2022 until Microsoft address the known regression in the ReFS format upgrade code.
• Microsoft Windows 11 support readiness for the same. The official support will require full regression testing of the generally available (GA) build when it becomes available. This article will be updated with a support statement once it happens.
• Microsoft Azure Stack HCI version 20H2 supported for host-based Hyper-V VM backup.
• RHEL/CentOS 8.4, Ubuntu 21.04, Debian 11, SLES 15 SP3, OpenSUSE Leap 15.3, Fedora 34 distributions supported as guest OS, for the installation of Veeam Backup & Replication components, and agent-based backup with the Veeam Agent for Linux 5.0.1 (included in 11a). For the complete list of supported distributions depending on the component, please refer to the System Requirements section of the Release Notes document.
• VMware Cloud Director 10.3 support. In addition, with v11a, you can now deploy Veeam Self-Service Backup Portal in environments with multiple Cloud Director servers.
• VMware VMC 15 support, including compatibility of VM restore operations with NSX-T 3.0 networks that use VDS 7.0 instead of N-VDS switches.
• VMware vSphere 7.0 U3 readiness based on the pre-release build. The official support will require full regression testing of the generally available (GA) build when it becomes available. This article will be updated with a support statement when completed.
   

Cloud-native capabilities for AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform

v11a relies on the new releases of native, cloud-specific Veeam Backup appliances to deliver the following additional functionality:

• Native protection of additional services: Expand native backup and recovery to Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) systems and Azure SQL Databases.
• Lowest cost archive storage: Achieve long-term retention goals for cloud-native backups within budgets. New support for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) Glacier, S3 Glacier Deep Archive, Microsoft Azure Archive Storage, and Google Cloud Archive storage cuts data archival costs by as much as 50X.
• Increased security and control: Safeguard encrypted backup data from ransomware and other cyber threats. Integrations with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) and Azure Key Vault, as well as new RBAC functionality, increases security with streamlined control over access authorizations.
• Fully integrated Google Cloud Platform (GCP) support: GCP VMs protection is now built directly into the Veeam Backup & Replication console. Further, with V11a, customers can now restore image-level backups created by ANY Veeam product directly to a GCP VM for cloud disaster recovery of any workload. With these additions, Veeam now supports centrally managed cloud-native backups and Direct Restore functionality for all three leading hyperscalers.
   

Instant Recovery to Nutanix AHV

With the new Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV v3 included in this update, Veeam expands its patented instant recovery functionality to additional hypervisors. Customers can now instantly recover image-level backups created by ANY Veeam product to a Nutanix AHV VM for instant disaster recovery of any workload - cloud, virtual, or physical. This functionality requires Nutanix AHV 6.0 or later.

Centralized management for IBM AIX and Oracle Solaris protection

Veeam Agents for IBM AIX and Oracle Solaris jobs can now be centrally monitored and managed through the integration with Veeam Backup & Replication protection groups of the “Computers with pre-installed agents” type. In addition, you can now perform file-level recovery from such backups in Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager.

Red Hat® Virtualization (RHV) support readiness

With support for a fourth hypervisor in a supported public beta, Veeam Backup & Replication v11a offers reliable integrated backup for Red Hat Virtualization (RHV) 4.4.7 or later so customers can create efficient backups of RHV VMs utilizing native change block tracking and be prepared for any disaster. 

Kasten by Veeam K10 integration readiness

With the new integration released as part of Veeam Backup & Replication v11a, K10 and Veeam customers will be able to leverage existing investments in backup infrastructure. The upcoming Kasten K10 v4.5 will be able to direct backups of Kubernetes clusters that leverage VMware persistent volumes to a Veeam Backup & Replication repository where its lifecycle can be managed and additional Veeam features and capabilities leveraged. This article will be updated with any additional requirements once the integration is validated on the K10 v4.5 GA code.

• Veeam Continuous Data Protect (CDP): improved performance and reduced CPU usage, added better monitoring and reporting for replication conveyor issues, added compatibility with a number of VMware Virtual Volumes (vVOLs) implementations, removed existing limitations on maximum I/O journal size for VMware vVOLs and VMware vSAN target storage.
• Improved health check performance: storage-level corruption guard functionality will now also use the advanced data fetcher technology, which should significantly improve its performance on enterprise-grade backup storage hardware.
• Elliptic curve cryptography: in addition to data encryption, elliptic curve based keys are now supported for registering Linux servers with Veeam Backup & Replication using the SSH public key authentication method.
• Restore directly from Capacity Tier: when a restore process is initiated from backups stored in the Capacity Tier (using the Backups > Object Storage node), we will no longer read matching data blocks from the Performance Tier and instead use solely the data from object storage. This capability can be useful for performing periodic non-disruptive restore tests directly from the cloud without putting your Performance Tier into maintenance mode.
• Object storage compatibility: to help object storage devices with limited scalability, you can again enable your backup jobs to use the 8MB block size to reduce the number of objects created. To make this option visible, create the UIShowLegacyBlockSize (DWORD, 1) registry value under the 'HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication' key on the backup server. Keep in mind that this option significantly increases incremental backups size and requires an active full backup to be activated.
• External repositories: backup server will now detect the presence of new restore points as they appear, instead of having to wait for daily and/or manual rescan to be performed, thus addressing various inconsistencies in the user interface.
• Microsoft Azure authentication library: we have switched from ADAL to the recommended and more secure Microsoft Authentication Library. Microsoft plans to discontinue ADAL support entirely in mid-2022.
• Microsoft SCVMM: we added the infrastructure caching service to improve the performance of SCVMM-integrated jobs and user interface operations in large Hyper-V environments registered with Veeam via SCVMM server.
• VMware vSAN integration: the task scheduler now uses the dedicated threshold of a maximum number of open VM snapshots per vSAN datastores, with the default limit of 32 snapshots. You can control this setting with the VSANMaxSnapshotsNum (DWORD) registry value under the 'HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication' key on the backup server.
   

Licensing

• Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager: centralized license management functionality now supports earlier backup server versions (starting from V10).
• Rental licensing: Automatic submission of the license usage report was changed from the 11th to the 6th day of the month to better align with the current VCSP program requirements.