Veeam Backup & Replication question

[sidewinder]

I'm trialling Veeam to backup out Hyper-V servers, and I have a question. Is it actually backing up the whole server? Because it is incredibly quick, and a worlds difference from Altaro, which religiously backed up the entire VHD and took up a mountain of space.

I've attached a screenshot from a test backup - could I restore those servers to another host from that backup? It's so small, but is it just intelligent enough not to backup free space? Also plenty of compression and dedupe by the looks of ii.

If all is ok then I'm very happy

veeam.png

[TheLibrarian]

We currently use Veeam; our resident expert is @sister_annex.

I'll prod him and see if he can respond.

[sister_annex]

Thanks for putting me on the spot @TheLibrarian!!!

Veeam is pretty intelligent with its free space tracking, instead of backing up each block of free space (which could be a Mb or 2 in size) it just marks that space as empty within the backup data (taking up a smaller footprint).

This does mean you will see a big jump in backup speed as the job gets to the free space

What version of veeam are you testing, what hardware are you using?

Also in answer to your original question, yes you can restore to any host as long as it matches the original hypervisor i.e. hyper-v to hyper-v or vmware to vmware.

We have just spent some time working out how much disk storage we have available - granted not all of it is in use and within the servers there is chunks of free space but of our available 40ish Tb the majority of that backs up in one night over the space of a few hours so speedy it most definitely is!

If you have any other questions let me know and i'll do my best to answer.

[sidewinder]

Thanks for that I think I will be recommending a purchase then

Using Backup & Replication v6, backing up Hyper-V VMs from local storage on 3 servers to our backup server, and eventually to a NAS in another building hopefully

I probably won't use it to backup data VHDs, such as the users disk from our fileserver, as all that data is backed up traditionally with Backup Exec anyway, just use it for OS disks instead, which are usually 60GB with half of that space free.

I was starting to tear my hair out with Altaro, I can't understand why it can't use some of the same methods. I was getting terabytes filled up quickly just backing up 5 or 6 servers. Veeam is so much better

[sister_annex]

TBH I have never used altaro so cannot comment but all I know is veeam radically changed my ideas of backups and what was traditionally possible.

Dont get me wrong though Veeam isn't the cheapest solution out there (per host processor licensing) but from my experience it is by far the best

It's quite nice that @TheLibrarian whores out my knowledge too, he'll be wanting a commission soon

[sidewinder]

Ah, so with 3 hosts I'd be looking at 6 licences if they are all dual processor?
Do you know a rough cost or have a recommended reseller? I could probably find this information out but I'm being lazy

[sister_annex]

Yeah if they are dual processor boxes (not cores) you will have to buy two licenses. We buy the veeam standard and get educational pricing through Probrand but there are other resellers so may be worth shopping around. I think we paid around £240 per processor for the last lot we bought.

HTH

[Bruce123]

Yeah if they are dual processor boxes (not cores) you will have to buy two licenses. We buy the veeam standard and get educational pricing through Probrand but there are other resellers so may be worth shopping around. I think we paid around £240 per processor for the last lot we bought.

HTH

When did Veeam start supporting Hyper-V out of interest?

[NISMO1968]

VEEM is definitely #1 in VM backup!

-nismo

[NISMO1968]

We've tested beta in September 2011. Core and whole infrastructure is the same.

-nismo

When did Veeam start supporting Hyper-V out of interest?

[rbance]

The licensing is based upon your protected hosts and it is a per socket (not core) license.

I have been using it extensively for a couple of years now.....really like it.....btw original screenshot is a successful backup it appears...and yes it is very quick...

One thing to look at is whether to use reverse incremental instead of normal incremental for backups....

[rbance]

You can restore to any host or any data store...as long as all is connected from the host the backup server is on.....you can also restore at a file level to any location you choose as well....
The manual has good info on all these topics...worth a read...