With agressive release cycles to faster integrate product features, security fixes and customer requests, it feels like yesterday when I was talking about Nakivo v10.6 as it hasn’t even been 5 months. This cadence and the content of the changelogs testify for solid product owning work going on behind the scenes over at Nakivo. They recently released Nakivo Backup & Replication v10.7 beta which brings a number of new features. However, what struck me with this release was the tighter integration with Microsoft provided services such as Blob storage, Teams, M365…
As usual, you can download Nakivo Backup & Replication v10.7 beta to give it a try and get a $20 Amazon gift.
Backup to Azure Blob Storage
In case you aren’t familiar with Azure Blob storage, it is a highly scalable object store for storing massive amounts of unstructured data. A more affordable alternative to file sharing service that is perfectly suitable as a backup destination. this offers solid data availability and recoverability due to it being managed in the cloud for you by Microsoft. You can configure it as a destination to store your backup and backup copies with instant recovery capabilities.
Note that you can also configure object locks on recovery points sent to the Azure repository to make those immutable, hence increasing resiliency against Ransomware attacks.
Microsoft Teams integration
In the previous release, Nakivo Backup and replication v10.6 beta brought support for Microsoft 365 Groups Backup. in this new version, Nakivo Backup and replication v10.7 beta builds on this integration by throwing Microsoft Teams into the mix. you can now back up teams to a SaaS repository to mitigate the risk of data loss and keep productivity up. It is possible to recover full teams, team items such as channels, posts, files and tabs to a location of your choice.
Microsoft 365 Change Tracking
As an infrastructure guy, I compared this feature to Change Block Tracking (CBT) for VM backup. You know how CBT lets third party products like Nakivo B&R to call the VAPI to request that the VMkernel return blocks of data that have changed on a virtual disk since the last backup snapshot.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.7 beta does a similar thing with Microsoft 365 change tracking to decrease job run time and improve backup performance. it will now leverage this feature to track and process only the data that has changed since the last backup job rather than running a full backup every time.
Wasabi Immutability
For the last two years, backups software vendors advertise their product as much for data protection as against Ransomware. Those have hit the IT landscape so hard that companies like Nakivo had to shift the focus from a product and marketing perspective toward Ransomware protection. Wasabi Immutability is a new mitigation capability in NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.7 beta in that regard.
I had to google Wasabi as I’d never heard of them before. A company founded in 2017 that focuses on affordable cloud storage with performance and security, to quote them:
[…] Hot Cloud Storage, a disruptively simple, one size fits all cloud storage technology that is 1/5th the price and faster than the competition with no egress fees, API call charges, or additional hidden fees. Wasabi is game changing, leading-edge cloud technology that allows users to affordably store a nearly infinite amount of data.
You can now enable immutability for any data stored in backup repositories within Wasabi buckets using the native Object Lock functionality. Immutable backups stored in Wasabi remain totally immune to deletion and modification for as long as needed.
Overview Dashboard
The v10.7 Beta release also introduced the new Overview Dashboard to the existing list of available dashboards in NAKIVO Backup & Replication. This new dashboard offers a global easy-to-read overview of your data protection landscape with a summary of the jobs, repositories, transporters in the form of widgets.
Claim your $20 Amazon Gift card
Claim a $20 Amazon eGift card by downloading and testing Nakivo v10.7 beta. Follow these steps to get yours:
- Download v10.6 Beta and proceed with one of the options in the download page.
- Send the support bundle indicating the option you chose
- to [email protected] by April 15th, 2022.
- Share your feedback by filling out a short survey.
Wrap up
Beta versions of Nakivo Backup and Replication are a great way to play with the product and help the teams fix it before going GA. If you are interesting in latest features and want to treat yourself on Amazon, Nakivo currently offers a $20 voucher to anyone who will be willing to help the company in the testing effort along the way by downloading Nakivo v10.7 beta and sending a support bundle after testing specific features.