NAKIVO Backup & Replication 6.0 VMware appliance is an easy choice for VM backups, can be installed directly on a Western Digital or Synology NAS!

Posted by Paul Braren on Mar 22 2016 (updated on Mar 24 2016) in
  • ESXi
  • Virtualization
  • HomeLab
  • HomeServer
  • Backup
  • NAKIVO is the first product to provide native backup and replication for Amazon EC2 instances. They've always had a focus on the simplicity of install, especially the VMware appliance. And now, a new web UI skin has arrived as well. More important for the IT Pro's home lab, it's become more versatile than ever, just take a look at that list of deployment options listed above.

    If you have:

    • an industry certification (VMUG member, VMware vExpert, VCP, VSP, VTSP, or VCI)
    • an interest in a free way to automatically back up your home-lab VMs, using an easy-to-configure VMware vSphere appliance that takes under 10 minutes to set up with your browser

    then you really should consider taking NAKIVO Backup & Replication 6.0 out for a spin, whether you have spinny drives, SSDs, NFS targets, or any combination thereof. Even if you don't have one of those certifications, the prices are reasonable, well-suited for the home lab or small business.

    I plan to have a hands-on look at the product in action, kicking the tires in my home virtualization lab before I head out to an Experts 2 Experts Virtualization conference in Las Vegas to demonstrate my SuperServer. Stay tuned!

    As NAKIVO promised me last year, backup copy jobs have also now been added. That that could be a very practical part of a proper backup strategy.

    Download

    Get-Free-NFR-NAKIVO-v6
    Click the image above and fill out the form, download begins immediately!

    Surprise, NAKIVO can also run directly on a modest, efficient NAS!

    NAKIVO-on-Synology

    I've selected some excerpts from the press release that are most relevant for the home lab, and have an install video from an earlier release, along with links to my previous articles about NAKIVO, including an option to install NAKIVO directly onto a Western Digital NAS, or on a Synology NAS, how cool (and efficient) is that? Unfortunately, my very inexpensive Synology NAS doesn't quite meet the minimum specs (2 CPU / 1GB RAM), something like a $300ish Disk Station DS216+ or higher would do nicely, specs here. Please let us know how testing on your NAS goes by dropping a comment below.

    Install_for_NAS

    You may also want to see more articles below, including a list of similar options from a variety of competitors that also cater to the industry-certified IT Professional.

    B01AUY8CLE-wide-angle
    Synology Disk Station DS216+ NAS at Amazon. About 7 watts idle, 17 watts under load. Two drives. 6.5"/165mm high.
    SYS-5028D-TN4T-scaled
    TinkerTry'd Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5028D-TN4T at Wiredzone, the only home server on the VMware HCL! octacore Xeon with 128GB of RAM runs Windows Server 2012R2/2016/Hyper-V, Red Hat/SuSE/Ubuntu. This is where most TinkerTry tinkering happens in my home. About 50 watts idle, about 90 watts under typical ESXi load when stuffed full of drives [4 HDDs, 2 SSDs, and 2 NVMe SSDs]. 9.45"/240mm high.

    Press Release Highlights

    NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6 was released today, featuring native backup and replication of Amazon EC2 instances, as well as Backup Copy jobs, native NFS support, and more for VMware and Amazon EC2.
    Campbell, CA, United States — March 22, 2016

    Support for VMware and Amazon cloud environments in the single pane of glass
    Scheduled, forever incremental backup of EC2 instances to a backup repository which can be located anywhere: in the same Amazon region, in a different Amazon region, or in a local office
    Flexible backup retention policy, which enables saving up to 1,000 recovery points for each backup and rotating them on the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis
    Support for live applications and databases of Windows-based and Linux-based Amazon EC2 instances
    Global data deduplication and compression

    Backup Copy Jobs: Backup Copy jobs provide a simple yet powerful way to create and maintain copies of backups, which can be stored anywhere: onsite, offsite, or in Amazon cloud. Backup Copy jobs copy backups from one backup repository to another, without touching the source ESXi hosts or source VMs/Amazon EC2 instances. This way source VMs/Amazon EC2 Instances are read only once, while backups can be copied to one or multiple locations. In addition, Backup Copy jobs have their own schedule and backup retention policy, which means that customers can run backup copies whenever they want and copy what they want to a secondary backup repository. This way, for example, customers can store several daily VM backups onsite, and keep (archive) weekly, monthly, and yearly copies of VM backups to a secondary backup repository for long term storage.

    NFS shares support: In addition to supporting Windows CIFS shares and local folders, NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6 enables creating backup repositories directly on NFS shares. Backup repositories can now be created on NFS shares simply from the product’s web interface.

    Improved Web interface: While the product's web interface has been praised by customers for its simplicity and ease of use, v6 further improves the interface and makes it even more intuitive with updated dashboards and configuration. For example, job dashboards now include live charts displaying backup speed and the amount of transferred data, while job wizards include the vSphere's "VMs and Templates" view.

    Features for VMware: www.nakivo.com/vmware-backup.html
    Features for AWS EC2: www.nakivo.com/aws-ec2-backup.html
    Success Stories: www.nakivo.com/en/customers/success-stories.html

    Demonstration of 5.7 that includes install from OVA, configuration, backup of VCSA, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10, and some successful test VM restores. 6.0 will have a very similar OVA appliance install but a new UI for backup operations.

    See also at TinkerTry


    See also


    Full Disclosure: "TinkerTry.com, LLC" is registered as a NAKIVO Bronze Partner, mostly to help get notified of latest news and code releases. I get no special early-access, anybody can sign up for the betas. All TinkerTry site advertising goes through middle-man BuySellAds. NAKIVO does know if you found their affiliate link from my site, which means the possibility of reseller commissions if you eventually upgrade to one of their paid offerings. Here's their pricing.