Each Veeam release is a massive set of new features and enhancements, and Veeam 13.1 is not an exception. For example, a “What’s New” document for Backup and Replication is 41 pages long.
Here you can find “What’s New” for all Data Platform v13.1 products:
Veeam Backup and Replication
Veeam ONE
Veeam Recovery Orchestrator
I won’t share all new features and copy-paste all 60 pages of all documents, but I’ll share with you features I really like and will definitely use in the nearest future. Make sure to read the What’s New document; I bet you will find a lot of good stuff for your backup infrastructure.
Virtual platforms:
First and foremost, the new Universal Hypervisor API (UHAPI) and a number of new supported hypervisors: Sangfor aSV, Citrix XenServer, XCP-ng, Platform9, and VergeOS.
All the new platforms support backup jobs, backup scans, instant recovery to VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix, and Proxmox, and restoring from any supported hypervisor or cloud VM.
(AWS, Azure, or GCP), or physical server backup.
KubeVirt Proxy for virtualization plug-ins: we can expect support for KubeVirt-based virtualization platforms. Want to see the day, when I can backup OpenShift, or Harvester VMs right from the Veeam console.
Few improvements for Nutanix AHV, including Web UI coverage: now we can create Nutanix backup jobs from the VSA web interface aligned with the VMware and Hyper-V, and Advanced RBAC support: administrators can define custom roles with scoped access to specific VMs and improve security.
Nutanix AHV, Proxmox VE, HPE Morpheus VM Essentials, and Scale Computing HyperCore received a new cool feature: VirtIO driver injection. Now Veeam can inject VirtIO drivers to the OS during the restore procedure. Previously, before restoring something like a Windows OS from VMware to Nutanix, you needed to install VirtIO drivers before the last backup, otherwise the VM couldn’t boot.
In addition, Nutanix AHV and Proxmox VE received improved restore job statistics.
For VMware, Veeam added Cloud Foundation 9.1 support and full VDDK 9 support. One other cool feature is Cluster-wide vPowerNFS datastore mount for Instant Recovery. Now an NFS datastore can be mounted to the whole cluster, instead of one host, meaning VMware can use HA and DRS with Instant Recovery VMs.
All hypervisors now have a universal worker image: a single, unified image that is FIPS and DISA STIG compliant.
Agents:
Web UI support: Agent Management capabilities are expanded in the Web UI, including support for
protection groups.
Veeam Agent for Windows got a few new features, including Remote Bare Metal Recovery, where administrators can initiate and manage Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) sessions for Windows machines directly from the Web UI. End users simply boot the affected machine into the pre-configured recovery environment, allowing administrators to perform the remainder of the recovery process.
Another cool feature is Virtual recovery partition where Backup server creates a recovery environmend directly on the target machine to enable Bare Metal Recovery without relying on PXE.
By the way, you can find Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows on Microsoft Store!
For Veeam Agent for Linux there are added Linux Distros, including Ubuntu 26.04, RHEL based 9.8 and 10.2 versions and .. support for RHEL 7.9 ELS (ELS meaning Extended Life Cycle support from Red Hat until May 31, 2029). Linux kernel 7.0 is also supported.
Now you can mange nosnap Veeam Agent for Linux in the same way as you manage standard
Linux agent. nosnap Agent leverage native capabilities of LVM and Btrfs and does not depend on Veeam’s blksnap kernel module.
Veeam Agents for Unix (AIX & Oracle Solaris) can now be managed by
backup server job mode, allowing backup jobs for IBM AIX and Oracle Solaris to be configured, scheduled, and executed directly from Veeam Backup & Replication.
Backup Infrastructure:
Universal CDP extends near-zero RPO continuous replication to Linux workloads. You can now continuously replicate any Linux machine – physical, virtual, or cloud – to VMware vSphere or VMware Cloud Director targets.
Malware Detection received entropy event investigation, full Web UI coverage, and performance improvements.
Security enhancements include MFA enforcement for Users and Roles changes, Windows Event Log Integration for Security & Compliance which enables integration with Syslog and SIEM, and other security platforms.
Another security feature I want to highlight is Single-port transport. With v13.1 release, all backup communications use a single port. Forget about ports 2500-3300.
Veeam Intelligence received a bunch of updates too and evolved from an AI assistant to a system that can investigate real backup data and help perform actions. It can provide expert-level troubleshooting within your environment, review existing support cases, add comments, and offer to attach diagnostic data, which is really cool. Veeam Intelligence is able to execute approved operational tasks like job control, component updates, license management, and so on.
Another feature is Capacity Planning, which can forecast future capacity requirements and identify abnormal growth patterns.
Veeam Software Appliance and Veeam Infrastructure Appliance:
Drive expansion: we can add additional drives to existing VSA to extend available storage capacity.
FC and iSCSI storage support: this is what I really like. Now we can add FC/iSCSI storage devices to the VSA/VIA repository instead of using local disks only.
Updates Mirror via Enterprise Manager: EM can now act as a centralized update
mirror, caching product updates from the official Veeam repository and distributing them to managed Veeam Infrastructure Appliance (VIA) and Veeam Software Appliance (VSA) deployments.
Prometheus-compatible metrics: yet another option to monitor Veeam infrastructure. Veeam appliances now expose a broad set of system metrics through Node Exporter. Looking forward to the new Grafana dashboard.
HA:
Support for cross-subnet HA clusters: added support for cross-subnet HA clusters, enabling HA nodes to be deployed across different networks or sites. Good option when a stretched VLAN is not an option.
Users synchronization: User synchronization is now automatic, keeping the secondary aligned with
the primary and avoiding the inconsistencies that can occur with manual user management
Private fix synchronization: Private fixes are now automatically synchronized between HA cluster nodes.
Veeam Infrastructure Appliance:
Single-disk deployment option for Veeam Infrastructure Applicance: a great option when using FC/iSCSI LUNs for storing backups, or when VIA operates as a proxy.
Added Direct SAN mode support over FC and iSCSI support and Backup from Storage Snapshots over NVMe/FC.
Backup Repositories:
The Linux-based hardened repository received few enhancements, including governance-mode immutability: Standard Linux repositories now support governance-mode immutability using the same underlying immutability engine as we use with the Hardened Repository appliance to enable flexible, policy-driven data protection, allowing organizations to benefit from immutability while simplifying deployment and allowing additional roles which are not allowed on Hardened Repository.
Authorization for immutability changes: Reducing or disabling the immutability period on hardened repositories and governance-mode Linux repositories now require approval from a second authorized user whenever four-eyes approval is enabled.
Object storage repositories can now operate in read-only mode, letting a second backup server (such as a DR-site instance) attach to a repository already owned by your production server. In read-only mode the second server never writes to or modifies the data and performs restore operations only.
General Improvements:
Veeam Updater on Windows: Windows-based Veeam Backup & Replication deployments, enabling
administrators to automatically download and silently install product updates without manually obtaining ISO images or running upgrade wizards.
Automatic Component Upgrade Distribution: In addition to the existing manual process, a Veeam Backup & Replication upgrade can now automatically update remote backup infrastructure components
“Move backup” operations no longer disable the entire primary source job when run on individual child objects for VMware and Hyper-V workloads.
Empty Job Creation Support: Backup jobs can now be created from preconfigured templates in
the Web UI without selecting a workload upfront, allowing administrators to define job settings first and add protected objects later.
In conclusion:
You can see how long this post is. And this is only a little part of the overall features I want to highlight.
I didn’t touch clouds, application plugins, API, or even Veeam ONE and Recovery Orchestrator. So my advice is to check What’s New documents for all products. You will definitely find a lot more interesting in the documents.
