Veeam adds direct restore to Microsoft Azure

Veeam has launched its Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure offering, enabling on-premises Windows-based VMs, physical servers and endpoints to be restored or migrated to the cloud.

Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure is available for preview as a free, pre-configured Azure appliance in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, providing cloud restore for Veeam Backup and Replication and Veeam Endpoint Backup.

The backup and disaster recovery vendor says the offering will help drive hybrid cloud adoption.

Ratmir Timashev, Veeam Software chief executive, says the flexible, scalable and cost-effective nature of the hybrid could is becoming more compelling to IT administrators.

"Direct Restore extends current investments in Veeam Availability solutions for our users and also enables them to fully utilize the power of the cloud. Veeam provides IT administrators with the flexibility and scalability of Microsoft Azure and the availability and data management expertise.

A recent IDC Research survey says depending on the exact definition of a hybrid cloud, 20% to 45% of respondents have already adopted what they consider to be a hybrid cloud strategy, while nearly all respondents have some aspirations for a hybrid cloud.

Frank Gens, IDC Research senior vice president and chief analyst, says by 2018, over half of enterprises' IT infrastructure and software investments will be cloud-based, reaching 60–70 percent by 2020.

"Pursuing [digital transformation] initiatives without a cloud IT foundation will be utterly impossible.

Veeam says the new offering enables users to quickly restore Windows-based VMs, physical servers or endpoints to Azure to minimise business disruption.

The new feature also enables users to execute planned workload migrations from on-site to the cloud to reduce on-site resource constraints.

"Azure-based test environments can easily be created for testing backup reliability as well as for patches and critical updates to mitigate risks associated with application deployment," Veeam says.

The company already enables organisations to store backups in Azure with its Veeam Cloud Connect for the Enterprise.