- Docker logs tail: Troubleshoot Docker containers with real-time logging - Wed, Sep 13 2023
- dsregcmd: Troubleshoot and manage Azure Active Directory (Microsoft Entra ID) joined devices - Thu, Aug 31 2023
- Ten sed command examples - Wed, Aug 23 2023
Organizations expect a data protection solution to be fully featured and equally adept at protecting workloads both on-premises and in the cloud. In addition to traditional virtual machines, businesses are using cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings more than ever. This trend will undoubtedly continue as companies have maintained a shift to a remote workforce since the beginning of the pandemic last year.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.2 has introduced significant new features that help expand NAKIVO's offering to strengthen its cloud SaaS features. It can also help protect your data from the ominous threat of ransomware and provide new features for managed service providers (MSPs) to offer DR-as-a-service (DRaaS) to customers more effectively. Let's take a look at NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.2 and review the new features included in this latest release.
NAKIVO has a track record for aggressively adding new features to the NAKIVO Backup & Replication solution. They have a healthy beta release program that allows customers and others to try out the latest features slated to go into the latest GA release. The beta features of v10.2 have been available for a few weeks now. However, NAKIVO has now released NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.2 as GA. There are three major new features in the v10.2 release. These include:
- SharePoint Online backup
- Amazon S3 object lock
- Tenant resource allocation
SharePoint Online backup
NAKIVO aims to cover the core features of the Microsoft 365 cloud SaaS environments. Over the past few releases, NAKIVO has been adding features that cover the Microsoft 365 SaaS environment's core components. Those releases include:
- v9.2—Microsoft 365 Exchange Online backup
- v10.1—Microsoft 365 OneDrive for Business backup
- v10.2 (new)—Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online backup
Why are cloud SaaS backups important? Most cloud SaaS providers, including Microsoft, operate under what they refer to as a "shared responsibility model." This means that you are ultimately responsible for your data and any data loss that may result if you do not have effective data backups. Microsoft doesn't offer native data protection tools for SharePoint Online or any other services or apps to make recoveries possible if data is deleted or corrupted.
With the new SharePoint Online backup capability offered in NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.2, organizations can now protect their SharePoint Online environments along with Exchange Online and OneDrive for Business. These new capabilities allow companies to protect their core assets housed in the Microsoft 365 cloud and have the tools to recover from data loss if needed.
Below is a screenshot from the inventory configuration showing the New Microsoft 365 Account screen. The new SharePoint Online backup option is shown in NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.2.
Adding a new Microsoft 365 account in NAKIVO with SharePoint Online services
Key features of the NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.2 SharePoint Online backups include the following:
- Incremental backups of SharePoint Online sites
- Ability to protect thousands of Microsoft 365 users in a single software deployment
- Instant granular recovery to recover libraries and lists to the original or different site within the admin account
- Compliance searches for searching and browsing your SharePoint Online backups to recover specific data needed
Amazon S3 object lock
Ransomware is an increasingly dangerous threat to business-critical data. New ransomware variants are becoming more sophisticated. They even seek out and target backup files from well-known backup technologies. NAKIVO has an advantage over other market solutions since it offers a Linux appliance to manage and store backups. Most ransomware variants target Windows Servers. Nonetheless, with this release, NAKIVO has added the ability to use Amazon S3 object lock to provide immutable backup storage that cannot be affected by ransomware.
When you select an Amazon S3 backup repository for your NAKIVO job backup destination, you can apply S3 object lock to recovery points. It ensures recovery points are immutable (cannot be changed) and stored using the write-once-read-many (WORM) model. When recovery points are immutable, users or processes cannot delete or alter them until a specified period has expired. The object lock also applies to admin users.
This strikes a blow against any ransomware that would try to encrypt backup files located in an attacked S3 repository. The data is essentially "locked" and cannot be overwritten, changed, or modified by malicious ransomware processes. It significantly bolsters the 3-2-1 backup best practice methodology with offsite backups. Offsite backups with S3 object lock essentially have an additional security layer that helps make sure data will be available and in a pristine state during a disaster such as a ransomware infection.
Below, you see the option to select Amazon S3 for your NAKIVO repository.
Selecting Amazon S3 storage for NAKIVO backup repository
Under the Retention configuration, you can choose to use the Immutability feature to turn on the S3 object lock on the repository.
Configuring S3 object lock on an Amazon S3 backup repository
The new Amazon S3 object lock is a great new feature that will help NAKIVO admins rest better, knowing restore points housed in Amazon S3 repositories with object lock turned on are immutable.
Tenant resource allocation
MSPs are increasingly offering DR-as-a-service (DRaaS) to customers. Using NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.2, MSPs have the tools needed to effectively provide these types of services to customers. New in NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.2, the tenant resource allocation features allow IT admins to manage resources available to different tenants in their data protection environments.
With the tenant resource allocation features, NAKIVO allows MSPs to control and assign particular resources to customers. This includes assigning hosts, clusters, VMs, backup repositories, and transporters to individual tenants. Resources can also be divided and assigned to individual business units within a particular customer organization. Below is an example of the Tenant Transporters screen, showing how you can assign these to individual tenants.
Assigning transporters to individual tenants
This new feature will undoubtedly bolster NAKIVO's capabilities for use with MSPs, providing DRaaS to customers and allowing them to configure resources as needed to individual tenants granularly.
Final impressions and wrapping up
NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.2 offers great new features that help to strengthen its capabilities in protecting the Microsoft 365 assets of businesses that make use of this cloud SaaS platform. Adding SharePoint Online to the backup capabilities rounds out NAKIVO's ability to cover the core services in Microsoft 365. The new Amazon S3 object lock is a welcome new feature that protects against arguably one of the most dangerous business-critical data threats today—ransomware. Finally, tenant resource allocation provides MSPs and others with the ability to assign resources as needed between customers and even between different business units within the same organization.
Subscribe to 4sysops newsletter!
Overall, this is a solid new release from NAKIVO that provides excellent features across the board. It will be interesting to see what's next with v10.3. NAKIVO also provides a fully featured trial version of NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.2. You can download that here.
