In case you haven't heard, NAKIVO has just released version 11.1 of their Backup & Replication platform. It has a lot of noteworthy features I think that make it a more flexible solution. NAKIVO has also improved the security, and made it even more capable for multi-platform environments (running VMware, Proxmox, Hyper-V, etc). This release has new capabilities for virtualization, physical servers, and cloud workloads. It also adds several new features that home lab users and MSPs will appreciate. Let's take a look at the high points from this release.
A multilingual interface for global teams
NAKIVO is thinking about multilingual teams with this release as they now officially support seven languages total. These include English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Polish, and Chinese. So, especially for MSPs and multinational organizations, it means admins and partners can manage backups, reports, and alerts without issues in translation. Notifications and alerts are localized so it makes it easy to make sure real errors or other issues are not lost in translation.
MSP Direct Connect simplifies remote management
NAKIVO is also upgrading the experience for MSPs. There is a new Direct Connect feature that has been expanded so MSPs can use it to manage environments without the need to open ports on the firewall and other network hoops to jump through on client networks. This will also help to reduce the attack surface since firewall exceptions do not need to be made. Also, all communication between the MSP director solution and client transporters are encrypted. This will help to make sure security and compliance regulations can be met for audit purposes.
The Direct Connect solutions supports Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware, Proxmox VE, and physical machines. All in all, this will be a good feature to give MSPs a way to manage different types of customer environments.
Expanded backup capabilities for Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE Server is gaining massive steam in both the home lab but also the enterprise. Many organizations are exploring the use of Proxmox VE Server as a migration target for VMware environments. However, enterprise backup solutions are a must for production environments. With this release, NAKIVO is expanding the capabilities for Proxmox VE Server. Now, admins can instantly boot virtual machines from backups using flash boot. You can now also replicate virtual machines for high availability and automatically verify backup integrity with screenshots of test recoveries. Backing up and restoring VM templates is also possible with this release along with log truncation of Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server.
Real-time replication for VMware environments
If you are running a VMware environment, there is a new real-time replication feature that is automatically installed and configured. You don't need to do any manual setup steps to get this up and running. Components like the IO filter and Journal service are already preconfigured.
VMware users gain real-time replication that installs and configures itself automatically. There is no manual setup required for services such as the IO Filter or Journal Service. If you experience an outage, failover to real-time replicas happens automatically as part of the Site Recovery workflow in NAKIVO NBR. Also, you can carry out non-disruptive testing to make sure that failover plans work before you ever need them. For security and compliance purposes, replicas are encrypted using AES-256 for secure transfers.
Granular backup options for physical servers
With the NAKIVO 11.1 release, physical server backups get an upgrade as well. You can now back up specific folders or volumes only if you choose. This can be on either Windows or Linux systems. So, no longer are you required to back up the entire server if you only need specific data. This will save a tremendous amount of time for the backup and storage space as well.
Backups for physical servers can be stored in a local repository, in the cloud, or on deduplication appliances, and also tape. For ransomware protection, you get backup immutability, encryption and air-grapped storage. You can perform granular restores as well. You can target just specific SMB or NFS shares if you want. Smaller restores can also be sent through email or downloaded in a browser session.
Flexibility and performance
One of the things that I have liked in the home lab and production environments with NAKIVO is that it installs quickly using their virtual appliance. You can also just quickly download the app on a supported NAS device and have an all-in-one backup appliance. You can target multiple backup targets that include local storage, but offsite cloud storage as well. You can send backups to S3 compatible storage like Wasabi, Azure Blob storage, and Backblaze B2.
NAKIVO has continued to work on performance with each release. Incremental backups are now faster, it has global deduplication, and compression. The backup verification process is automated also and each job has detailed reported so you can go back and see what state things are in or why something failed.
A worthy release for upgrade
The NAKIVO 11.1 release has some really good improvements underneath the hood. NAKIVO continues to evolve the functionality of the product with even more features that bring it on par with something like Veeam for lower cost. Proxmox support and features are continuing to get better with each release and that is great news for those that are looking for even more reasons to transition off VMware with the now much higher pricing under Broadcom.
MSPs get a lot of good new features with this release as well, including the new Direct connect feature and the VMware real-time replicas continue to take VMware disaster recovery even further under the platform.
Has anyone here already tested Flash Boot or the new Proxmox replication? I would be interested to hear how you feel it compares with the built-in Proxmox backup solution and vzdump recovery in various scenarios.
