How We Use Veeam for On-Site and Off-Site Backup Solutions

At Metanet, we’ve crafted a robust and efficient backup solution centered around Veeam, a leading provider of backup, recovery, and data management solutions. Our approach combines the powerful features of Veeam with our high-performance infrastructure to offer unparalleled disaster recovery and business continuity services. Here’s how we achieve this:

Onsite Backup with Veeam

For onsite backups, Veeam allows us to create consistent and reliable snapshots of virtual machines (VMs) from within a private cloud on a schedule that suits our customers’ needs. Whether it’s daily backups or more frequent hourly snapshots, Veeam provides the flexibility and control required to ensure that critical data is always protected. Our customers benefit from:

• • Instant VM Recovery: Veeam’s ability to restore entire VMs within minutes ensures minimal downtime during disruptions.

• • Granular Recovery Options: Whether restoring an entire VM or just a single file, Veeam’s granular recovery options provide the flexibility to quickly recover exactly what’s needed.

• • Automated Backup Verification: Veeam automatically tests and verifies backups, ensuring that they can be recovered without issues, giving our clients peace of mind.

• • No Licensing Costs for Up to 10 VMs: We offer our customers the ability to use Veeam for backing up, up to 10 VMs without any licensing fees. This is part of our commitment to helping businesses get started with a reliable backup solution at minimal cost. By removing the barrier of licensing fees, we make it easier for businesses to implement and benefit from enterprise-grade backup solutions.
  • On an extreme budget? For customers that are on an extreme budget and have a high volume of small VMs, we sometimes offer stacking of Veeam Community Edition (Free) backup hosts.   To avoid a very costly budget, it would be possible to lease a second dedicated server or enterprise VPS to install a second community edition version which allows up to 10 free VM backups.  Two servers can bring the total backup to 20 VMs without additional cost. It does not coordinate the same as if a customer purchased a paid license but for most basic backups, this is sufficient for these types of customers on limited budgets.
  • Flexibility in backups on any budget: Customers have the choice of monthly, weekly, daily, and CONTINUOUS backup without any additional licensing costs.  CDP (Continuous Backup Protection) is a type of service where your data is continuously backed up, not in an interval such as daily or hourly, but continuous.  This is the ultimate solution for e-commerce, SAAS, or database IT, where data is constantly being received and any loss of that data would result in substantial business losses.  When the systems failover to the remote site, that data can be ported back to the original database, which did not lose information due to the constant backups every second on the clock. The only downside to CDP is that it will use much more storage space.  Fortunately we offer increased storage at affordable monthly costs.  Our storage can be simply SSD or NVME storage but it can also be a scalable storage network configured for size (SATA) where latency and recovery speed are not as vital but raw inexpensive space is, or complex rapid storage flash arrays where speed and scale is most important.

Offsite Backup and Disaster Recovery with Veeam

Offsite backups are a critical component of any robust disaster recovery plan. At Metanet, we extend Veeam’s capabilities by replicating backups to our geographically distributed disaster recovery (DR) sites in New Jersey and Staten Island. This ensures that our customers’ data is safe, even in the event of a major disaster impacting their primary site. Key advantages include:

Veeam Replication: By replicating VMs offsite, we enable near-instant failover capabilities. Should a disaster occur, customers can quickly switch to their replicated VMs at our DR sites.

Data Encryption: Veeam’s encryption ensures that data remains secure during transfer to our DR sites, providing an additional layer of protection.

Efficient Bandwidth Usage: Veeam optimizes data transfer through deduplication and compression, ensuring that even large datasets are transferred efficiently without consuming excessive bandwidth.

Free Up to 10 VMs with No Licensing Costs

To help customers get started with backup and disaster recovery, Metanet offers Veeam’s free tier, which supports up to 10 VMs at no licensing cost. This initiative allows our clients to:

• • Kickstart Backup Operations: Customers can immediately start backing up their VMs without the need to purchase licenses upfront, providing significant cost savings.

• • Offsite Disaster Recovery at Low Cost: By leveraging our infrastructure, clients can replicate their VMs to our DR sites, establishing an offsite disaster recovery plan with minimal investment.

• • Scalability: As their needs grow, customers can easily transition to Veeam’s paid features, scaling up their backup and recovery operations without disruption.

This offering is particularly beneficial for small to mid-sized businesses that are looking to enhance their disaster recovery capabilities without a large initial outlay.

Metanet’s Lightning-Fast 10Gbps Private Fiber Network

One of the most significant advantages Metanet offers is our lightning-fast 10Gbps private fiber network that connects our main Manhattan site to our DR Backup sites in New Jersey and Staten Island. This high-speed network is a game-changer for disaster recovery and business continuity, and here’s why:

• • Instant Failover without IP Address Changes: Traditional disaster recovery solutions often require IP addresses to be changed when failing over to a backup site, which can lead to downtime and complications. At Metanet, our private fiber network ensures that IP addresses remain the same during a failover, enabling a truly instantaneous transition.

• • No Need for DNS Changes or GLSB Implementation: DNS changes and Global Load Balancing Systems (GLSB) often add complexity and potential points of failure in a disaster recovery plan. With our solution, neither DNS nor GLSB needs to be implemented, simplifying the failover process and ensuring that services remain uninterrupted.  The special thing about our private network is that your recovery VMs can keep the same IP address as your main VMs.  So if your main VMs fail, the backup VMs can be spun up and as they are using the SAME IP ADDRESSES, no changes are needed, our systems will simply route the internet service over our private fiber backbone to your remote DR location and those backup virtual machines will come up automatically on the same IP address. NO DNS Changes, no GLSB.  This is a service unique to Metanet, and cannot be found at another web host.

• • Low Latency and High Throughput: The 10Gbps connection ensures that data is transferred rapidly between sites, reducing recovery times and ensuring that backups are always up-to-date. This high-speed connection supports the seamless operation of critical applications, even during a failover scenario.

Unique Value in the Marketplace

Metanet’s approach to disaster recovery and business continuity, powered by Veeam and supported by our 10Gbps private fiber network, offers a unique value proposition in the marketplace. Few providers can offer:

• • Instant failover without IP or DNS changes: This feature eliminates the common headaches associated with traditional failover processes.

• • Seamless integration with Veeam: Ensuring that data is protected, easily recoverable, and always available across both onsite and offsite environments.

• • Cost-effective entry-level solutions: Allowing customers to start with free Veeam licenses and scale up as their needs grow.
  • Rapid VM Restore and Provisioning:  Allows customers to spin up remote DR VMs on QNAP hardware and auto-synchronize data across the same network between different data centers in different states using the same IP subnet.

In conclusion, Metanet’s combination of Veeam’s powerful backup capabilities with our high-speed, resilient network infrastructure ensures that our clients can protect their data and maintain business continuity, even in the face of disaster. This approach not only minimizes downtime but also simplifies the entire process, making it accessible and affordable for businesses of all sizes.