Veeam Backup

[JATSO]

Hi All,

 

Can someone help me out here, I have Just installed out DC and Sims server as VMs on Hyper V and they seem to be working fine, I am now looking at Veeam to Backup the host and 2 VMs and have downloaded their software for the community edition.

 

Do I install the the software on my Host system and run it all from there and then install our file backup solution on the VMs to backup the files?

 

Thanks

[Steve21]

I mean it depends on your setup really

 

You can install Veeam in a few places depending how you want it, personally we have it on a separate server in the backup location, so it's self contained if the main HOSTs die. But you can have it on a VM as well on the host if you want, personally I wouldn't install it neat on the host unless you really wanted to.

 

It'll auto install the agent on the servers when they're added into the system

 

Steve

[LeMarchand]

I installed it on a host, and then found that it occasionally wants to restart to perform an update - not ideal if you've got other VMs on that host!

[aicrd]

I installed Veeam on a dedicated backup server. All you need to do is give Veeam credentials to access Hyper-V and it'll install some sort of agent on the host which it uses to backup the VMs which means it can really be installed on any machine with network access to your servers.

[computer_expert]

I'd keep it on a separate system away from the hypervisor that runs everything else (an old server if you have one laying about?).

 

If veeam is installed in a VM, then just be aware that it can be a hassle passing USB devices though (such as an external HDD for off site backups) to the VM with Hyper-V. I'll probably get a bit of criticism from other members but a backup server is one of the few roles I like to keep on a dedicated physical box (you can quickly isolate it by pulling the network cable in the case of a ransomware outbreak for example).

[Davit2005]

As @Steve21 says.

 

We had a separate server in my last place, that had a FC direct connection to the SAN from the backup server ( we had 16 blades in the chassis). You can put Proxies which can have benefit but depends on your setup.

 

I used Veeam as a free edition at home before and managed to schedule jobs using Veeam PowerShell and windows Task Scheduler in my home network, I can see if I still have the scripts if they may be use to you? It was even possible to encrypt the backups but if I remember rightly if you lost the encryption key you could NOT get the backup back.

 

I'd always be for a separate backup server if possible.

 

#updated "if you lost the encryption key you could NOT reportedly get the backup back"

Edited August 14, 2020 by Davit2005

[aicrd]

I used Veeam as a free edition at home before and managed to schedule jobs using Veeam PowerShell and windows Task Scheduler in my home network, I can see if I still have the scripts if they may be use to you?

 

I thought Veeam already had built in backup scheduling? At least the version I'm running has?

[jthompson]

Installed on a dedicated physical server here, but if you don't have one of those available, I'd be inclined to install it on a dedicated VM rather than onto the host. It'd help to keep your host as clean as possible, and it'd allow you to run maintenance on your Veeam server during business hours without impacting other stuff.

[Steve21]

I thought Veeam already had built in backup scheduling? At least the version I'm running has?

 

He's on about the old Veeam Free version I guess, the "new" free community one does yes

 

Steve

[Davit2005]

I thought Veeam already had built in backup scheduling? At least the version I'm running has?

 

That is new, I didn't think it had that before with the free version, thought it was ad-hoc backups, lol. I'll have to spin up a VM and install it at home and have a look. Maybe it was the functionality to encrypt the backups the reason why I done the Powershell scripts it was about 4-5 years ago, lol.

 

I think you can start off with a trial and once it ends the functionality is limited?

 

I have it installed as a VM at home. With a dedicated HDD just for backups and then these get copied to rotated portable HDDs that I store at work.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Davit2005

[aicrd]

You can encrypt backups with community edition as well. That's how I backup my homelab. I've only used recent versions of Veeam though as I used to just manually copy the VHDs to a secondary drive as a backup.

[Tefters]

People say dedicated server however Veeam itself is not super demanding other than IO/Network transfers.

 

You can quite easily take an i3 desktop pc and just install server 2019 on (yes, technically making it a server but people have these visions of big 1/2u rack servers or floor standing ones), slap in a few 3/4 TB hdd's or hookup a Nas on iScsi and your all good.

Direct attached disks are favoured.

 

I usually suggest 16gb ram as a go to for a veeam proxy, 2x 1gb NIC's and setting your respository to either 2 or 4 concurrent tasks depending on your storage setup.

 

Unless you want to go ultra enterprise pre-made storage server you can build yourself a Veeam Proxy with a decent case, board, ram and drives like you would any custom build pc on a fairly good budget.

Edited August 17, 2020 by Tefters

[Davit2005]

For those of you using the community edition of Veeam.

 

I see it is limited to 10 workloads, is that the max number of Objects it can concurrently backup or is it the max Objects (VMs, Physical servers, etc.) you can have selected for backup?

 

There certainly is a lot more in the community edition than there used to be in the free version and the benefit of SureBackup I could prob do without at home to be honest.

Edited August 25, 2020 by Davit2005

[aicrd]

The 10 instances is the max amount of objects you can have in a backup (VMs, File Servers, etc) so if you had 2 backups, both with 5 objects each, you'd use up your full 10 instances. At home I use the NFR version of Veeam which gives you Enterprise and 20 instances for free.

 

https://www.veeam.com/blog/how-to-get-free-veeam-nfr-key.html

 

 

If you're a Veeam partner you can also get a version with a limit of 50 instead. Its really good for home use but obviously you can't use it in production.

Edited August 25, 2020 by aicrd

[Davit2005]

The 10 instances is the max amount of objects you can have in a backup (VMs, File Servers, etc) so if you had 2 backups, both with 5 objects each, you'd use up your full 10 instances. At home I use the NFR version of Veeam which gives you Enterprise and 20 instances for free.

 

https://www.veeam.com/blog/how-to-get-free-veeam-nfr-key.html

 

 

If you're a Veeam partner you can also get a version with a limit of 50 instead. Its really good for home use but obviously you can't use it in production.

 

Thanks, Suspected as much.

[TwistedHelixis]

The 10 instances is the max amount of objects you can have in a backup (VMs, File Servers, etc)

So if I had 1 host with 2 VMs the free version would be a good option???

[aicrd]

As long as you dont require any of the enterprise features then yes. Veeam Community has quite a lot of features already. I'm not actually 100% sure if you can use the community version in a commercial environment though so may want to check on that.

[fredbayker]

As long as you dont require any of the enterprise features then yes. Veeam Community has quite a lot of features already. I'm not actually 100% sure if you can use the community version in a commercial environment though so may want to check on that.

 

Yes it’s allowed