The multi-hypervisor disaster recovery orchestration engine, which also works with Veeam Backup & Replication, is designed to let enterprises easily execute, test and document DR plans, and should provide partners with additional consulting opportunities.
Doug Hazelman, Veeam’s VP of Product Strategy
Veeam Software has announced Veeam Availability Orchestrator, a multi-hypervisor disaster recovery orchestration engine that works with Veeam Availability Suite and Veeam Backup & Replication to let enterprises easily execute, test and document DR plans.
“Disaster recovery orchestration is something that we didn’t have per se, previously, ” said Doug Hazelman, VP of Product Strategy at Veeam. “Until Version 7 of the Availability Suite, it was a manual process. With version 8, we added basic failover capabilities, but it was simplistic. An orchestrator is much bigger in scope, and also provides the documentation of that failover plan.”
Veeam Availability Orchestrator provides orchestration of Veeam backups and replicas through a defined disaster recovery plan, non-disruptive testing, automated documenting, updating and reporting.
“Customers will first set the Orchestrator up, to determine how it will fail over,” Hazelman said. “The first stage is planning, deciding how to do it and setting up rules. Then test the plan and make sure it works. We can keep the automated documentation up to date because we are aware of what’s going on in the infrastructure. Dynamically changing infrastructure is kept up to date, including new additions to it.”
Hazelman said that the Availability Orchestrator is really targeted at the vendor’s enterprise customers.
“We envision this as important to our enterprise customers, especially those with concerns about compliance,” he said. The reduction in the costs of manual processes will also be proportionally greater with larger customers.
The solution will be available later this year. Veeam Availability Orchestrator is licensed per VM and designed to work with Veeam Availability Suite and Veeam Backup & Replication. It is not part of the core suite, but is rather an add-on as part of Veeam Enterprise Plus.
Hazelman thinks this will be a significant revenue-generator for the company’s channel.
“Our partners are always looking for things to help customers with disaster recovery preparedness,” he said. “They can now go back to their customers and ask them to look at this new solution from Veeam, and can them help them define their DR plans and set up orchestration for them. It’s a really good add- on to help them grow more business.”
