Some time ago I wrote about Nakivo Backup & Replication, more info here. In this blogpost I’m going to write about some special features I especially like about Nakivo Backup & Replcation (NBR from this point on..)

Flash VM Boot

Flash VM Boot enables you to run (boot) VM’s directly from compressed and deduplicated VM backups without recovering the entire VM first. You don’t need any additional configuration and all changes don’t effect the backup  and are discarded when the VM is powered off. (You don’t have altered backup files)

Enabling Flash VM boot is very easy. Go to the recover menu and select Flash VM Boot.

Select the VM

After you click Finish & Run you see your Flash VM running on your VMware server. When the recovered VM is no longer needed, click Discard in the menu to power off and remove the VM.

Like I mentioned all the changes are abonded. You are able to save your changes by replicating or backup this temporary VM.

Screenshot Backup verification

When you perform a back-up you want 100% confirmation that your backup is succesful. Nakivo Backup & Replication  (NBR) has a unique feature called Screenshot Backup Verification. This means that after a backup, NBR uses Flash VM boot to quickly mount and start (without network connectivity) the specific VM. After booting up the server, NBR takes a screenshot of the powered on VM and emails you that picture. The VM is then powered off. This way you see that the backup works. NBR uses iSCSI technology for mounting the backup files.

Screenshot Verification can also be started on demand when you choose to.

Nakivo Virtual Appliance

It is very easy to deploy and configure the Nakivo Virtual appliance on your VMware server.After you download the OVF from the Nakivo website you can easily import that on your server.

The benefits of deploying an OVF file is that a) it saves you a lot of time, b) you don’t have to spend so much time maintaining and patching your server and c) it’s ready to go. Just import it and it works! No need for configuring.

After importing the OVF file you can start the appliance.

Configure the network settings, set the date/time and do a Software update. One remark : I updated the appliance using the CLI (it’s just Linux (Ubuntu) running) and afterwards I noticed bad network performance. When updating using the normal NBR interface everything worked fine. De default username/password is root/root. Don’t forget to change this! You can login to the appliance using https://<IP>:4443