The newest freebie is Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange, which lets virtual machine admins search and retrieve items inside Exchange without an agent. The admins can browse Exchange databases from a compressed backup file. Veeam claims the databases will be searchable in less than two minutes. Items can be exported to PST or MSG files.

Veeam Explorer for Exchange is now an “exclusive beta,” which means it is available for what product strategy specialist Rick Vanover calls “our largest fans.” That group consists of large customers as well as frequent Veaam tweeters and bloggers who will spread the word.

The Exchange feature requires the full Veeam Backup & and Replication application now, but will be added to the Veeam Backup Free Edition that Veeam launched in June. That free edition does ad hoc and limited backups of VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V but lacks support for deduplication, replication, incremental backups and a backup scheduler.

“The free version was light, but we gave it legs by adding this tool,” Vanover said.

The Exchange feature will also be built into the next version of Backup & Replication, due before the end of the year.

Vanover said the “freemium model helps us reach people, and in some cases is an eye opener for them. We’re banking on a lot of interest for Explorer for Exchange. Exchange is a beast. A lot of people have their own personal ‘big data’ in Exchange. This tool lets them work with it right from their backups.”

Veeam’s competitive situation changed earlier this month with Dell’s $2.4 billion acquisition of Quest Software. Quest owned Veeam’s major VM-only backup rival vRanger. Dell hasn’t said much about its plans for Quest’s backup products, but it can pump more development and distribution resources into vRanger than Quest did.

Vanover said the immediate impact for Veeam is that its close partnership with Dell will end.

“That changed our relationship with Dell,” he said. “We’ll still go the distributor route with them, but in terms of joint promotions, that’s non-existent now.”

First, virtual server backup specialist Veeam released Backup & Replication 6. That in itself wasn’t a huge development. Veeam revealed full details of the product back in August, and said it would be shipping by end of year. It even leaked the most important detail – support of Microsoft Hyper-V – six months ago.

The most interesting part of the launch was the reaction it brought from backup king Symantec. Symantec sent an e-mail reminding that it too does virtual backup (through its X-ray technology) and claimed “point products are complicating data protection.” Symantec released a statement saying “In the backup world, two is not better than one. Using disparate point products to backup virtual and physical environments adds complexity and increases management costs … Organizations should look for solutions that unite virtual and physical environments, as well as integrate deduplication, to achieve the greatest ROI.”

Sean Regan, Symantec’s e-Discovery product marking manager, posted a blog extolling Symantec’s ability to protect virtual machines.

In other words, why bother with products such as Veeam and Quest Software’s v-Ranger for virtual machines when Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec combine virtual and physical backup? But the established backup vendors opened the door for the point products by ignoring virtual backup for too long. Symantec didn’t really get serious about virtual backup until the last year or so.

Randy Dover, IT officer for Cornerstone Community Bank in Chattanooga, Tenn., began using Quest vRanger for virtual server backup last year although his bank had Symantec’s Backup Exec for physical servers. Dover said he would have had to put agents on his virtual machines with Backup Exec and it would have cost considerable more than adding vRanger.

“Before that, we were not backing up virtual machines as far as VMDK files,” he said. “If something happened to a VM, we would have to rebuild it from scratch. That’s not a good scenario, but basically that’s where we were.”

Dover said vRanger has cut replication time and restores for his 31 virtual machines considerably. And he doesn’t mind doing separate backups for virtual and physical servers.

“Using two different products doesn’t concern us as much,” he said. “We generally look for the best performance option instead of having fewer products to manage.”

Quest took a step towards integrating virtual and physical backup last year when it acquired BakBone, adding BakBone’s NetVault physical backup platform to vRanger.

Walter Angerer, Quest’s general manager of data protection, said the vendor plans to deliver a single management console for virtual and physical backups. He said Quest would integrate BakBone’s NetVault platform with vRanger as much as possible. It has already ported NetVault dedupe onto vRanger and is working on doing the same with NetVault’s continuous data protection (CDP).

“We are looking forward to an integrated solution for for virtual, physical and cloud backup,” Angerer said. “I’m not sure if either one will go away, but we will create a new management layer. The plan is to have a single pane of glass for all of our capabilities.”