Finally! Veeam Backup & Replication v13 and Veeam Software Appliance release. The v13 release begins with the Veeam Software Appliance, followed by the complete Veeam Data Platform (version 13.0.1) in Q4 2025. Please read carefully the KB.
As usual the “what’s new” document is large, and for v13 it’s about 28 pages.
1. Veeam Software Appliance (VSA) — a prebuilt Linux-based (Just enough OS (JeOS)) appliance, including DISA STIG hardening, and all the backup software you need to run Veeam as fast as you can. This appliance covers everything you need, including easy patching and updating;
2. Veeam Infrastructure Appliance (VIA) — Based on the same JeOS as VSA, a pre-built and pre-hardened appliance, which you can use for any backup infrastructure role (proxy, repo, and so on). No need to install and configure Linux/Windows anymore for a new infrastructure component; just use VIA ;
3. Web UI — finally, a Web UI; enough said;
4. High Availability — Using VSA and Veeam Data Platform Premium Edition, we can implement a highly available VBR cluster. In short, HA replicates configuration database and necessary settings between two appliances;
5. Enhanced Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), including new custom role wizard provides an interface for defining roles and their associated permissions;
6. Single Sign On (SSO) — a new feature enabling you to leverage external Identity Providers that support Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0.
There are many other features, but I will highlight just a few:
1. Linux-only backup infrastructure — yes, now you can build your backup infrastructure using Linux, but Windows is still supported. Not sure, that this applicable to VeeamONE;
2. Reduced network port requirements;
3. PostgreSQL 17.6 configuration database, including automatic upgrades;
4. Fast and secure data hashing algorithm — The usage of modern BLAKE3 hashing algorithm reduces backup proxy and backup agent CPU usage up to 30%, which directly translates into increased backup performance in scenarios where CPU is the bottleneck;
5. Enhanced Malware Detection and Application-Aware Processing.
Nutanix AHV:
1. The AHV backup appliance has been integrated directly into Veeam Backup & Replication, eliminating the need for managing a separate appliance with its own local web UI;
2. vTPM support;
3. Persistent guest agent support.
Proxmox VE
1. Added Microsoft VSS integration for application-consistent backups and application-item recovery by Veeam Explorers.
VMware vSphere
1. Full vSphere 9.0 support.
Agent-based Backup
1. Distribution server on Linux;
2. Removal of admin$ share requirement — After the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows has been deployed, backup server will no longer require the protected machine’s admin$ share;
3. Significantly improved backup performance for Windows and Linux as well;
4. Added new Linux distro support, including RHEL 10 (and others), Debian 12.11 and 13.
Recovery from Image-Level Backups:
1. Instant recovery engine improvements — Improved I/O performance for VMs running directly from backups up to 50% compared to v12, significantly accelerating instant recovery and all capabilities that rely on this engine;
2. Mass VM restore improvements — significantly reduces CPU and RAM usage on the backup server;
3. Support for additional controller types — Support for IDE, SATA, and NVMe virtual disks have been added to the Virtual Disk Restore wizard.
Unstructured Data Backup
1. Backup proxy on Linux;
2. Backup engine improvements — V13 achieves an average of 25% performance improvement over V12;
3. NFS backup performance — NFS3 shares backup performance has been improved through leveraging multiple TCP connections.
Enterprise Applications
1. Backup to object storage — All application plug-ins now support backup to object storage;
2. Backup encryption support — All application plug-ins now offer backup encryption at source to protect backups from unauthorized access and data exfiltration;
3. A lot of enhancements in Veeam Plug-in for Microsoft SQL Server, including centralized management, similar to Oracle RMAN and SAP plug-ins;
3. Backup performance improvements for Oracle RMAN backups;
4. New supported distros for Oracle RMAN and SAP HANA plug-ins;
5. Veeam Plug-in for SAP MaxDB;
6. Enhancements on Microsoft Entra ID and Mongo DB plug-ins.
Backup Infrastructure
1. Simplified target path selection — The Hardened Repository registration wizard will no longer show system directories on the repository path selection step;
2. Simplified repairing — Easily reconnect hardened repositories to another backup server using certificate-based authentication and time-limited PIN codes;
3. Hardened repository visibility — Hhardened repositories are now hidden from the Files node of the management tree and are also not available for selection in the File Copy jobs;
4. Immutability architecture improvements for Object Storage — The immutability model has been optimized to reduce storage overhead and the number of API calls;
5. Persistent Data Mover on deduplication appliances — Veeam Data Mover is now installed permanently on ExaGrid, Quantum DXi, Infinidat InfiniGuard, and Fujitsu ETERNUS CS800 arrays upon initial connection. This requires updated storage firmware;
6. LTO10 support.
Backup Console
1. Refreshed UI design;
2. Dark mode support;
3. Reporting built-in —allows users to view reports using Veeam ONE reports directly from the backup console;
4. Credential Manager improvements;
5. Encryption password verification — You can now verify stored backup encryption passwords to confirm your memory, or records of them, are still correct;
6. Repository configuration validator — The Add Backup Repository wizard now explicitly prohibits the creation of repositories with path nested in directories used by other repositories to prevent possible data losses caused by such configuration;
7. Console download — The backup console setup can now be downloaded directly from the backup server using the link at the bottom of the Web UI logon page.
TThe last section contains numerous API enhancements. What I really like is the standalone module for Linux — You can now install the Veeam Backup & Replication PowerShell module to a RHEL 9 or Rocky Linux 9 based server with a dedicated PowerShell package and start using your PowerShell scripts with PowerShell 7.
Please keep in mind that this post is a shortlist of features I really like. The document is much more than you can see in this post. MPlease make sure to familiarize yourself with this document. I am 100% sure you will find a lot of interesting things.
