NAKIVO Backup & Replication 6.1 released, still an easy choice for VM backups

You may recall I announced the NAKIVO v6.1 beta back in early July. Turns out I was able to participate myself, do several backups and restores, and provided some constructive UI and functionality feedback to the developers. I actually enjoy doing beta testing for about two decades now, and it's helpful to have the tools to make good use of about 1 hour of my time: three monitors, a fast home lab, and Camtasia desktop recording to share video with voice-over feedback. Doesn't hurt to have picked up a HGTS HE10 10TB drive recently either.

So I'm glad to hear NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6.1 is already here, just one month later! I'll admit I haven't had a chance to try this GA release quite yet, had quite the busy day already. But I can say that the new UI that I saw is a nice step forward in usability for the new user who just wants to get some VMs backed up. The appliance is very easy to install. Once downloaded, installation and configuration in your VMware vSphere environment at work or at home is very straight-forward, and takes just a few minutes. You can point it at your ESXi host(s) and/or your vCenter. Configure which VMs you want to protect, and you now have that first VM backup running.

From the list of new features they've added (detailed below), it's clear there's an enterprise focus here. I'm just hoping this fast and easy choice for simple home labs stays easy to use, which is currently a large part of its appeal for me personally. Naturally, they're obviously hoping the IT pro who tries this at home will also give it a spin at work, and making NFR code available to IT professionals for free is a very wise move.

See also system requirements.

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Press Release Highlights

• NAKIVO Releases v6.1 for VMware Backup and Recovery

  NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6.1 provides cool new features, including instant object recovery for Microsoft Exchange 2016/2013, Microsoft Exchange 2016/2013 logs truncation, Hot Add for fast LAN-free VMware backup and replication, job chaining, as well as performance and reliability improvements.
  Campbell, CA, United States — August 2, 2016

  NAKIVO Inc., one of the fastest-growing virtualization and cloud backup software companies for VMware and Amazon AWS environments, today announced that it has released NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6.1. The new version improves VMware backup performance, speeds up recovery, and simplifies backup management.

  Microsoft Exchange is the industry's leading platform for e-mail, calendaring, and messaging. The new NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6.1 extends the support of its Instant Object Recovery feature to the latest releases of Microsoft Exchange: 2016 and 2013. Now, customers can instantly browse, search, and recover Microsoft Exchange 2016 and 2013 objects (such as emails) directly from compressed and deduplicated VMware VM backups, without the need to restore the entire VM first.

  In addition to improved recovery, NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6.1 can now also truncate log files of Microsoft Exchange 2016 and 2013. The transaction logs record all changes that are made to an Exchange Server database. Over time, these log files accumulate and can consume all of the available disk space, if not periodically removed.

  To further improve VMware backup speed, NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6.1 introduces the new Hot Add feature, which enables the product to read and write data directly from/to VM datastores, bypassing LAN. By automatically using Hot Add, the new version offloads production LAN from the data protection traffic while significantly increasing the VMware backup and recovery speed.

  NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6.1 also simplifies VMware backup management by introducing job chaining. With this feature, a job can finish its tasks and then trigger another job in a chain. This way, for example, it’s easy to set up a chain where a VM backup job saves data locally, and then triggers a Backup Copy job that sends backup copies to Amazon cloud.

  "We are excited to release the new NAKIVO Backup & Replication v6.1," said Bruce Talley, CEO and co-founder of NAKIVO. “We are committed to delivering functionality that helps our customers meet their RTO and RPO objectives for VMware backup and recovery."

  NAKIVO Backup & Replication is VMware-certified, purely agentless, can be installed on Linux and Windows, deployed as a pre-configured VMware Virtual Appliance and AWS Amazon Machine Image, and can also be installed directly on Synology NAS to create a high-performance VM backup appliance. NAKIVO Backup & Replication has a simple and intuitive Web interface, supports live applications and databases, provides instant recovery of VMs, files, and application objects directly from compressed and deduplicated backups, speeds up data transfer with network acceleration, and reduces data size with global deduplication and compression.

  RESOURCES
  VMware Backup: www.nakivo.com/vmware-backup.html
  AWS EC2 Backup: www.nakivo.com/aws-ec2-backup.html
  Trial Download: www.nakivo.com/vmware/vmware-backup-trial.html
  Success Stories: www.nakivo.com/customers/success-stories.html

See also at TinkerTry

• 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!
  Mar 22 2016

• First look at Infinio Accelerator with SuperServer cluster shared Synology iSCSI datastore
  Oct 22 2015

• Announcing NAKIVO Backup & Replication v5.8 - virtual appliance, Windows service, or installed on an Intel-based Western Digital NAS
  Oct 12 2015

• NAKIVO Backup & Replication 5.7 fully supports vSphere 6, vSAN, and VVol, an easy choice for home labs
  Jul 09 2015

• NAKIVO Backup & Replication 5.5 released, NFR available to VCP and vExperts through Mar 31 2015
  Mar 19 2015

• Superguide: Home virtualization lab backup software, some special deals for VMware VCPs and vExperts
  Nov 26 2014

See also

• NAKIVO System Requirements (all platforms)

• Nakivo – Backup and Replication for your VMs – A review!
  AUG 09 2016 by Mike Preston at mwpreston.net
  This is an in-depth article that really gets into the components and features, a great read!

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.