As I prepare to write my VMCE on version 9 I figured I would try and document some of the material here that I’ve been studying – This is the same approach I took when I wrote my VCP’s and VCAP exam and it seemed to work, I passed them – and hey, if I can help to provide a little material for someone else to look over when they are studying for their certification then that’s ok too!
One thing, I can’t vouch for all of this being 100% accurate – I have a lot to cover in a very short time period so I’m scrambling to get through all of the modules as fast as I can – so if you see errors, please let me know and we can get them fixed up… Also you may find that I have certain sections of information in more than one spot, or information that doesn’t quite fit into the module I’m not – just ignore it – I’ll try and clean everything up as best I can after I’ve completed the certification.
Another thing, Veeam doesn’t necessarily have a blueprint for the VMCE – there is a lot of great information here, but nowhere is there an official blueprint! So I’m going to follow along with the course description of the VMCE v9 class and see if that works. Honestly, blueprints are nice to help organize things, but for the most part, you just need to know everything!
So lets start…
Module 1 – Introduction
Hi, I’m Mike from Canada eh!
And on to Module 2.
Module 2 basically just covers off a brief overview of the products Veeam has to offer, as well as provides a definition for some key industry concepts that Veeam adheres to. How much of this will be on the exam – no idea, but it isn’t that hard of material – But, in efforts to have completeness in this study guide let’s go over it anyways.
Overview of Products
Veeam has quite a few products under its portfolio and seem to be constantly adding more and more. Below is a brief overview of what Veeam has to offer on the market today
- Veeam Backup & Replication
- Agentless backup supporting both VMware and Hyper-V
- Provided in 4 different editions; Free, Standard, Enterprise, & Enterprise Plus
- Veeam ONE
- Real-time monitoring, reporting, and capacity planning.
- Reports on both VMware and Hyper-V environments as well as monitors and reports on your Veeam Backup & Replication environment.
- Provided in 2 different editions; Free and Paid
- Veeam Availability Suite
- A bundled piece of software that includes both Veeam Backup & Replication as well as Veeam ONE.
- Provided three different editions; Standard, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus.
- Each edition includes the paid version of Veeam ONE and the corresponding edition of Veeam Backup & Replication.
- Veeam Backup Essentials
- Delivers the same functionality as Veeam Availability Suite, but targeted at SMBs
- Can be licensed to a maximum of 6 sockets, in two socket increments.
- Provided in 3 different editions; Standard, Enterprise, & Enterprise Plus.
- Veeam Management Pack for System Center
- Provides visibility and protection into both Hyper-V and VMware VMs
- Extension of Microsoft Systems Center.
- Ability to monitor VMs, hosts, hardware, storage, network resources as well as your Veeam Backup & Replication environment.
- Provided in 3 different editions; Free, Enterprise & Enterprise Plus
- vSphere Web Client Plug-in
- Provides an overview of your backup infrastructure status/trends and the ability to identify unprotected VMs directly from within the vSphere Web Client.
- Create ad-hoc VM restore points without leaving the vSphere Web Client.
- Veeam Backup & Replication Add-on for Kaseya/Plug-in for LabTech
- allows you to analyze protected and unprotected VMs from within the products respective web interface/control center.
- Manage, View, and monitor your Veeam Backup jobs
- Generate reports based on Veeam Backup & Replication data.
- Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE
- Allows you to backup and restore Windows-based endpoints (desktops, laptops, and servers).
- Integrates with Veeam Backup & Replication allowing you to utilize VBR Repositories to store your data.
Key Concepts
Within the Veeam Availability Suite and other Veeam products there are several key concepts that are discussed. Veeam has came up with 5 key components that provide an overview of all of their products, discussed below
- High-Speed Recovery – very fast recovery of your applications, VMs, and files. Backed by several Veeam technologies such as Instant VM Recovery, Instant File-Level Recovery and the Veeam Explorers (Exchange, Active Directory, SharePoint, Oracle, SQL, and Storage Snapshots)
- Data Loss Avoidance – Near continuous protection and streamlined recovery processes in the event of a disaster. Backed by products and technology such as Veeam Cloud Connect, Native tape support, Quick Backup, Scale-Out Backup Repositories, Guest Interaction Proxies, Deduplicating storage integrations, backup from storage snapshots and Built-In WAN accelerations.
- Verified Recover-ability – Guaranteed recovery of your data. Backed by technologies like SureBackup and SureReplica
- Leveraged Data – Provide a production like environment to leverage backup data to its fullest potential. Backed by technologies such as Virtual Lab.
- Complete Visibility – Proactive monitoring for your virtualized and backup environment. Backed by technology such as Veeam ONE, Standalone Console, Veeam Enterprise Manager and vCloud Director support.
Aside from the Veeam created concepts there are a couple of other important items and its best to know how Veeam defines them.
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO) – The amount of time within which a system must be recovered after an outage.
- Recover Point Objective (RPO) – The point in time to which a systems data must be recovered after an outage.
- Recover Time Point Objective (RTPO) – Veeams definition of how they can provide both a low RTO and a low RPO at the same time.
That’s it for Module 2! Stay tuned for Module 3 where we will begin to discuss some of the core components of Veeam Backup & Replication as well go through the deployment scenarios and upgrades!
