Backing up Multiple Hypervisors with Acronis Backup 12.5

In early days of virtualization, most companies used one hypervisor — VMware vSphere. Now, there are a lot more options on the market, such as Hyper-V from Microsoft, XenServer from Citrix, Oracle VM Server from Oracle, Linux KVM, and Red Hat Virtualization.

There are many choices, and IT departments pick and choose which hypervisors they use because they see advantages in each. It’s common for companies to use multiple hypervisors — in fact, according to an Acronis study, 54 percent of companies use two or more hypervisors in their environment.

For example, VMware vSphere is a commercial product. Microsoft’s Hyper-V, however, is included with the purchase of the Microsoft operating system. Companies can switch to Hyper-V for secondary projects simply because it’s free, or they can switch from VMware to a new vendor because of changing economic situations, buying criteria or other reasons.

Protecting data in a multi-hypervisor environment is not trivial – your data protection vendor may provide different interfaces for different hypervisors, or even not support some of them at all. This would leave you, an IT administrator, at risk of delayed or even failed data recoveries.

Acronis Backup 12.5 is here to help. The new secure backup is designed to protect your entire multi-hypervisor environment from a single touch-friendly web-based console. You will see all your VMs and hosts in the same place, allowing you to schedule your backups, test them, and recover when needed even to a different hypervisor, physical system, or the cloud.  

Acronis Backup 12.5 supports the following hypervisors:

• VMware vSphere – including VADP-compliant VMs with agentless backup; non-compliant VMs, like physical RDMs, independent disks, VMs with guest-initiated iSCSI, as well as free ESXi with agent-based backup. You can also back up your ESXi host, so that you don’t have to reconfigure the host during the recovery. Acronis Backup 12.5 also supports VMware VM replication with WAN optimization, as well as SAN snapshots.
• Microsoft Hyper-V – including VSS-compliant VMs with agentless backup; non-compliant VMs, like pass-through disks and VMs with guest-initiated iSCSI with agent-based backup, and your Hyper-V host, like you would do for any Windows machine.
• Citrix XenServer – any VM with agent-based backup as well as XenCenter system.
• Red Hat Virtualization – any VM with agent-based backup as well as RHV Manager system.
• Linux KVM – any VM with agent-based backup as well as your Linux host itself.
• Oracle VM Server – any VM with agent-based backup as well as Oracle VM Manager.

You will see all your hosts and VMs in a single interface, and can even apply backup policies and grouping to VMs from different hypervisors! Nice customizable dashboards will show the status of your entire environment and allow you to drill down and resolve any issues quickly.

Best of all – you can restore your VM backup to any hypervisor with just a few clicks. You can even start a machine directly from your backup storage on your VMware or Hyper-V host without moving the data.

READ MORE:

• Off-Host Backup Processing in Acronis Backup 12.5
• Comprehensive Reporting in Acronis Backup 12.5
• Quick Insights With Acronis Backup 12.5 Dashboards
• Protecting Large Hybrid IT Environments With Acronis Backup 12.5