Veeam, how do you do yours?

[gshaw]

I think we're going to be using Veeam to back up our VMs once we get our new virtual environment installed, partly due to its technical merits and also as it will end up saving us money compared to buying Backup Exec virtual agents and support!

 

Just wondering how people are setting it up in terms of where you're backing up to? I'm thinking of having a dedicated server (nothing too powerful), with some SATA 2TB disks in RAID5. Should also give enough space to house DPM backups for 2nd level of paranoia

 

I'm wondering if some people run Veeam as a VM and then replicate the backups from SAN to a cheap NAS box, only issue I can see there is if the virtual environment disappears in a disaster you won't have a Veeam server to restore from unless you set another up.

 

We also need to back the Veeam backups off to tape, maybe weekly or monthly so it could make the VM argument academic as I'll need a physical box to connect the tape drive up to anyway...

[Dave_O]

Gshaw

 

Got to be physical (actually it hasn't but you really don't want to go there - I did and regretted it). In our case Veeam box - Dell 2950 with 6x 1.5Tb drives raid 5. 1x HBA directly attached to SAN. Two drives C: and F: drive F have a Veeam folder with all jobs in subfolders. Jobs are split into services eg one job for apps, one for Exchange servers, one for sharepoint servers etc. These are backed up once a week, with more critical services eg DCs and MIS everyday. Jobs have on average 5 previous version. I have posted speeds of these elsewhere in this area. All jobs have a partner job which is identical that backs up to one of two QNAP boxes in another part of school just in case we get hit by a plane. Veeam box F: drive gets copied to LTO4 encrypted tape once a week. Tapes are retained for one month (one set in August is retained for 1 year). DPM on exchange, MIS, sharepoint and fileserver with a granularity of (on average) 2 snaps per day retention period of 60 days (SIMS done hourly retention period 10 days to cover lesson registration). BackupExec on physical machines (DPM, one DC, Veeam box, VMWare view broker, TMG). Another tape drive backs up fileservers to LTO2 in yet another part of school just for kicks.

 

I've probably told you all of this already, if I have then apologies.

 

Trust me this is the best way, unless you want to go for SAN remote mirroring which is better but cost sh*t loads of money.

 

Dave O

[Butuz]

Hey guys - I am looking at possibly purchasing Veeam to bacup my VMs.

 

One Q I have is - does Veeam backup VM images and files via the VMWare ESXi servers or can it connect directly to the SAN and offload the data directly?

 

Many Thanks

 

Andrew

[Dave_O]

Hey guys - I am looking at possibly purchasing Veeam to bacup my VMs.

 

One Q I have is - does Veeam backup VM images and files via the VMWare ESXi servers or can it connect directly to the SAN and offload the data directly?

 

Many Thanks

 

Andrew

 

Veeam uses either LAN or Fibre. To use fibre your Veeam box has to have an HBA that is zoned to see the SAN LUNs

 

Dave O

[Butuz]

Currently using LAN on iSCSI. So if the Veeam box had a NIC connected directly to my SAN network switch via iSCSI that would work?

 

Thanks

 

Andrew

[Dave_O]

Currently using LAN on iSCSI. So if the Veeam box had a NIC connected directly to my SAN network switch via iSCSI that would work?

 

Thanks

 

Andrew

 

Sorry, not sure about iSCSI, best check with Veeam. Having said that the transfer rate over LAN is still good.

 

Dave O

[gshaw]

Definitely DL180 route with SATA HDs in that case

 

Had a tip from someone the other day to get WD Enterprise drives instead of the HP ones... 5yr warranty and cheaper than the HP ones which are only 1 year warranty... might just look into that!

 

The only other thing to decide on is whether to get the Essentials or Essentials Plus version... one does single item restore the other doesn't... about £1k difference but it's a one-off purchase so might be worth getting the functionality now and having two backup systems to cover everything.

[RickVanover]

Currently using LAN on iSCSI. So if the Veeam box had a NIC connected directly to my SAN network switch via iSCSI that would work?

 

Thanks

 

Andrew

 

Hi Andrew - I am Rick Vanover and I work for Veeam. Yes, if the Veeam Backup & Replication Server has a NIC directly on the iSCSI network, and the iSCSI initiator configured, the direct SAN access should work as expected to perform backups.

 

You can poke around the Veeam Forums and you may be able to see others with similar configuration, but I don't expect an issue with what you've identified above.

[gshaw]

Hi Rick,

 

Does Veeam support VMs being stored on NFS? Just looking at the options if we go with an EMC VNXe SAN and whether that will make backups simpler or more complicated!

[pantscat]

Veamm will work with NFS storage... I've tested it out with my NetApp box.

Just need to find some cash for it!

[Butuz]

Hi Andrew - I am Rick Vanover and I work for Veeam. Yes, if the Veeam Backup & Replication Server has a NIC directly on the iSCSI network, and the iSCSI initiator configured, the direct SAN access should work as expected to perform backups.

 

You can poke around the Veeam Forums and you may be able to see others with similar configuration, but I don't expect an issue with what you've identified above.

 

Hi Rick.

 

Many thanks for signing up here just to answer my question. That is very impressive service.

 

Welcome to Edugeek by the way!!!

 

Butuz

[RickVanover]

Hi Rick,

 

Does Veeam support VMs being stored on NFS? Just looking at the options if we go with an EMC VNXe SAN and whether that will make backups simpler or more complicated!

 

As said above, NFS is fine. It really comes down to what the Windows-based Veeam Backup&Replication Server can connect directly to. Cheers!

[deandownsouth]

FWIW...Running Veeam 7 backing up about 100 VMs (heading for 300 when migration is completed off of VMware VDP/MS DPM) and we went virtual for the Veeam server. Having no performance problems at all, although we did make sure that we gave it plenty of RAM and CPUs (8GB/8CPUs) and placed it on its own physical blade for the pilot. Using a combination of iSCSI and FC targets attached to the Veeam VM. I would only use physical if it absolutely would not work or was dog slow. I don't like physical servers (except ESX hosts of course). They're messy and a pain. So we virtualize Exchange, SQL Server, Oracle, Sharepoint etc. Veeam was a no brainier as it's one of the most important systems and the more important a system is the more it needs to be virtual.

[afggy]

Yep, Veeam B&R management server can be installed on any Windows-based machine, regardless it’s physical or virtual. It is where you place backup proxy server components what is more important in terms of performance (though, I admit, the default proxy installed as a part of Veeam B&R installation is more than enough for small environments). Just consider system requirements for the proxies, the rule of thumb is a single core and additional 200MB of RAM per each concurrent task you're going to assign to this server.

 

As for the backup target, then the most effective backup storage for Veeam B&R from the cost/quality perspective is an ordinary server stuffed with a bunch of hard drives (or directly attached to it).