Back up Physical and Virtual Workloads–Maximizing the Profitability of Each of Your Customers

As a managed service provider, a primary business concern is whether your current portfolio is sufficient in meeting all of your clients’ IT needs. Customers are, after all, demanding more from their providers to keep availability for their enterprises always-on. Today’s increasing demands mean managed service providers must be a one-stop shop for all IT needs. When it comes to backing up data, many organizations are seeking to leverage the cloud for both their physical and virtual workloads, and have a need to back up and consolidate both instances into a single and secure environment. And, with this strategy, the need for a reliable agent solution to back up physical workloads becomes increasingly important.

Veeam Software knows that virtualization is the gateway to the cloud, but not all workloads can be virtualized. On Aug. 23, 2016, Veeam unveiled its vision for the future: Veeam Availability Platform for the Hybrid Cloud. It’s a platform that not only establishes Veeam as a true leader in virtualization, but, with the inclusion of Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows and Veeam Agent for Linux, it also enables managed service providers to deliver on new levels of availability in physical backup.

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows will protect servers and workstations on premise and in the cloud. It comes with full integration with Veeam Backup & Replication backup repositories. This allows centralized backup and recovery options of an entire hybrid cloud environment, either virtual or physical, on a single Veeam repository. And, as a service provider, your customers can back up these workloads to your environment leveraging your backup as a service (BaaS) or disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) offering. This allows your customers to back up, protect and ensure availability to internal and external HDDs, remote USB drives and shared folders on the network.

While the anticipated Veeam Agent for Windows release is great news to partners, they are equally excited to hear the announcement of Veeam Agent for Linux. This newly released product will ensure the Availability of Linux workloads, regardless of whether they’re deployed in the public cloud or on-premises. Using the Veeam Backup & Replication console, partners will be able to manage Linux backups along with their customers’ other Veeam backups.

Both agent releases represent a big opportunity for Veeam’s 13,400 Veeam Cloud and Service Provider (VCSP) partners, who will now be able to offer these critical physical pieces of the availability puzzle to their loyal Veeam customers. Veeam Software was founded as a virtualization company, and its product journey remained mostly agentless until 2015, with the release of Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE. A simple solution that backs up Windows-based desktops and laptops, Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE provides the ability to back up to an external hard drive, NAS (network-attached storage) share or a Veeam Backup & Replication repository, and recovers in a matter of minutes. Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows builds on Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE in some wonderful ways.

With Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows and Veeam Agent for Linux, managed service providers can help their customers overcome numerous challenges when it comes to delivering availability for physical and cloud-based servers and workstations–on-premises or remote–including:

• Making the cumbersome and expensive processes involved in backing up and recovering Windows and Linux instances that reside in the cloud easier
• Catering to complex hardware configurations or regulatory compliance requirements when providing robust backup for physical servers and workstations that cannot be virtualized
• Providing low RPOs for roaming laptops and tablets belonging to traveling users and those in home offices

Rethink Physical Possibilities

The shift to cloud and virtualization is certainly worthy of your attention and deserves taking center stage in your product strategy, especially due to margins. But don’t forget that while bare metal servers may be more of a necessity in your product lineup, there is a new game to be played when it comes to starting a new offering for server backup and virtualization needs. Veeam can now support you with this endeavor, and help your customers avoid downtime and data loss for Windows- or Linux-based physical or public cloud-based workloads—quickly and easily.

Capitalize on the Hybrid Cloud Shift

There has been a significant shift to cloud in recent years due to flexibility and scalability, but even businesses moving to cloud are seeing the benefit in retaining their physical servers on-premises for a variety of reasons, and are choosing to move to a hybrid cloud approach. IDC predicts that by 2017, more than 60% of enterprise IT organizations building hybrid clouds will purchase new or updated workload-centric cloud management solutions.¹ With the need to consolidate both physical- and cloud-based workloads into one centralized virtualized environment, the opportunity for agents to help back up physical workloads to the cloud is stronger than ever.

Backup Legacy, Physical Servers

Physical servers and endpoints are in some ways an untapped well for managed service providers, and, for Veeam, the ability to back up physical environments to the cloud has been a top request from customers and partners. As a partner, it is imperative to start offering agents as a capability. Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows and Veeam Agent for Linux are just another example of Veeam’s commitment to enabling managed service providers to offer services, whether virtual or physical, to deliver availability for the always-on enterprise.

With Veeam Agent for Windows and Linux, you can:

• Reduce cost and complexity while ensuring availability for Windows and Linux instances in the cloud
• Achieve availability for physical servers and workstations that cannot be virtualized
• Meet RPOs and reduce the risk of data loss for desktops, laptops and tablets outside of the corporate network

1. Source: IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Cloud 2017 Predictions, November 2016, Doc # US41863916

Edward Watson is Global Product Marketing Manager, Cloud, for Veeam Software, a provider of availability for the always-on enterprise, helping organizations meet recovery time and point objectives (RTPO) of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data.

Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.