VBR & Cloud a Business Model – Part 1

New articles to show which are the common business models that leverage the Veeam cloud technologies.

Today I’m going to cover two kinds of services:
A) Remoting Backup Data (RBD)
B) Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

For every above service, the article will show the two options available:
1) Un-managed Service
2) Managed Service

The scope of these articles is to explain  Roles, Tasks, Responsibilities, license management to have a big picture of the service models.

Note-1: If you need technical details on how to deploy and how to use these functions please refer to the official documentation and ask the local Veeam representative.

Let’s start!

1) What is an un-managed service?

It’s the way in which the service provider installs, maintains and manages hardware and software in its “sites” providing a reliable service.

The customer must handle all his configuration tasks to use the services bought from Service Provider.

The following example is an easy way to fix in mind what an un-managed service is.

Office365 (now Microsoft 365) provides e-mail, SharePoint, teams, one drive services.  Microsoft itself is responsible to maintain the service up and running, but all the tasks to use it are in charge of the customer.

If you need more details about data & service responsibility on Microsoft 365 environment just take a look at the following pdf, if you want to know more about how to implement a service, please click here

AB-1) Un-managed Service & Remoting Backup Data & DRaaS

The technology supplying a Veeam Service is named cloud connect. The idea is creating a private and secure connection from the Tenant to the Service Provider side that makes shared resources available.

Picture 1 shows the backup flows and resources (Repositories) for RDB. Picture 2 shows the DRaaS flows and resources (Virtual Hosts).

Welcome Veeam Cloud Connect!Picture 1

Veeam Cloud Connect Replication, la NUOVA soluzione in arrivo con la versione 9            Picture 2

Tasks and responsibilities:

SP administrator (Cloud Connect):

    • Deploying the front-end CC Architecture (Gateway)
    • Deploying the back-end CC architecture (Backup Server/Repository/Wan-Accelerator/vCD/VSPC/SQL…)
    • For each Tenant, defining the resources to be provided (multi-tenant model)
    • Using the VSPC to monitor and report on resource use

Tenant Administrator (From VBR console):

    • Adding the Service Provider service discovering the purchased resources
    • Setting up local backup jobs
    • Setting up the backup copy job where the repository is the SP site
    • Setting up the Replica job for DRaaS
    • Performed Restore activities
    • Performed Partial and Full Failover

How is it possible to measure the services?
Is it possible to show both the use to service provider & Tenant?

The answer is yes just using the Veeam Service Provider Console (if you are a Service Provider please take your life easier deploying the VSPC).

Which sort of measure can I get from it? Very detailed usage report that can be automatically sent to a Reseller and to the tenant (via e-mail also).

VCSP can be used also to create and manage invoices.

Note-2: VSPC is the license manager focal point where you can see through reports the license Status (Approved, Waiting for Approval) for a specific period of time (details available clicking to VCSP license and to the last article of this serie) 

2) What is a managed service?

Managed services are the practice of outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining, and anticipating the need for a range of processes.

The schema used for 1AB can be used for 2AB as well

Tasks and responsibilities:

SP administrator (Cloud Connect):

    • Deploying the front-end CC Architecture (Gateway)
    • Deploying the back-end CC architecture (Backup Server/Repository/Wan-Accelerator/vCD/VSPC/SQL…)
    • For each Tenant, defining the resources to be provided (multi-tenant model)
    • Using the VSPC to monitor and report on resource use

SP administrator for Tenant Administrator (From VBR console):

    • Adding the Service Provider service discovering the purchased resources
    • Setting up local backup jobs
    • Setting up the backup copy job where the repository is the SP site
    • Setting up the Replica job for DRaaS
    • Performed Restore activities
    • Performed Partial and Full Failover

Here also the VSPC can be used as a central point of service management

Note-3:

The service providers using the pairing vCloud Director (vCD) technology and Veeam Cloud connect, can replicate production VMs directly inside the tenant virtual Data Center (vDC) as shown in Picture 3.

vCloud Director Tenant Account - Veeam Cloud Connect GuidePicture 3

This approach simplifies not just network management (NSX) but also the cloud Service provider adoption.

A natural extension is the migration services of the tenant workload from on-premises to Cloud through Cloud Connect.

Is there a different way if a Service Provider/Tenant does not implement/use the Replicas job?

The answer is sure, and I named the use case as Cold Disaster Recovery“.

The idea behind itis restoring the backup tenant files on SP virtual architecture.

To allow it to work it’s necessary:

a. The tenant has provided the backup file encryption password. 

b. Since from the VBR console the SP can’t browse the tenant backup files (The VBR SP console in fact can just show if a backup is running), the SP has to implement a script to import backup data to SP Backup Server. Luckily you can get the script from Github (Thx to an Andrea Borella works).

c. Just now from the SP-VBR console at the menu “imported backup copy” will appear all backup copy job of the tenant, and the SP can restore VMs.

That’s all for today guys.

My next article will cover topics about vCLOUD DIRECTOR backup as an un-managed service.

The last one will talk about all you need to know about the licensing.

Stay tuned!

VBR & Cloud Business Model – Part 3

This article will cover the topic of license in VCSP scenarios.

Please refer to the official documentation to get more details on it.

The easiest way to explain the license model is by thinking of a basket.

a. What is present in the basket?
It is the container of the licenses. The licenses belong to the Service Provider.

b. What the Service Provider can do with licenses?
It can assign them to his customers (you can call them end-users or tenants).

c. Does the services consume different amounts of licenses?
The cost depends on the supplied service.

The example below will clarify the licensing method; the units I will use to explain the model are apples 🙂
(numbers written here are not real, contact the local Veeam sales representative to have a correct quote).

A Service Provider supplies three types of services to his customers;
DraaS, BaaS, RbcS(Remote Backup Copy Service)

Every single month the Service Provider buys 100 “apples” and put them into the basket.

Let’s suppose that:

1) DraaS consumes 10 apples for VM a month (VM/m)
2) BaaS 4 apples  VM/m
3) RbcS 6 apples VM/m
4) Every tenant has 5 VMs
5) Service Provider customers are: Green – White – Red
6) Green bought DraaS
7) White bought BaaS
8) Red bought RbcS

How can I measure the apple-eating?
With an easy math operation 🙂

Green = 5VM*DraaS = 50 apples
White = 5 VM*BaaS = 20 apples
Red=5VM*BbcS=30 apples

Total = 100 Apples

Note 1: If the Service Provider adds new customers or the present tenants more VMs the Service Provider license can be enlarged on-fly easily contacting the Veeam team.

But, if the license count it’s quite simple with few customers it can be more difficult with hundreds of them.

In aid of of the Service Provider Veeam released a  very useful and powerful software named  Veeam Service Provider Console (VSPC)

What are the common VSPC use cases?

1) Remote monitoring and management
2) Licensing engine and usage reporting
3) Billing
4) Integration and automation (RestFul API)
5) Multi-tenant serviceability

(To have more details please click here)

Picture 1 shows which services can be managed via VSPC.

Picture 1

Please remember that cloud connect is mandatory work with VCSP.

The official guide shows the requirements to work with it:

Note 2: The software provided by Veeam enables any partner to create his own cloud services. To example performing a backup service for workstations and laptops  of employees that working from home (a common scenario in these unlucky last months)

Note 3: To create a price list every single Service provider will have to add all costs of Infrastructure, Managing etc

That’s all for Cloud Modelling.