infrastructure advice

[systeembeheerder]

Hi,

I have been using VB for some time now (version 4,5,6, and now 6.1). By all the option avialable I am a bit lost.
This is how our environment looks like.
3 sites (a,b,c), different subnets, all connected with dedicated fiber connections.
site a is the main site, 500Mb connected
site b is the backup site, 500Mb connected.
site c is a branche office, 100Mb connected.

All hosts 6 are Vmware Exi5. VBR6.1 is installed on a virtual machine on the main site. Storage to the ESX hosts is provider by iSCSI, Equallogic PS5000E and a Dell MD3220i.
The Backup server, on the backup site, is a Windows Server 2008R2SP1. It has direct attached storage of a MD1000.

What would be the best backup methode and where should I place a proxy server?

[foggy]

Hello, Addy!

You tell nothing about what are you going to do with your VMs - backup locally/offsite, replicate locally/offsite, how many of them, their change rates, etc... It really depends on the backup activity and load your backup proxies should handle.

In general, you should locate the backup proxy closer to the data source to leverage fast data retrieval modes. Assuming you are going to backup VMs from both the main site and branch office to the backup site, you need at least one proxy server in each of them (and you already have a default backup proxy on your Veeam B&R server in the main site). To spread the load and to optimize your backup window, you can set up additional proxies. In case you are going to replicate, you also need a proxy in the target site to get maximum replication performance.

Btw, overall product architecture is pretty well described in the user guide and in the sticky FAQ topic, please review and if you still have any questions, feel free to ask here. Thanks.

[systeembeheerder]

Hi foggy,

to answer your question: VM's are Windows servers, about 10 , about 8 linux. total size is 1,8Tb on the main site. backup from the main site will be to the backup site. backup full every month, reversed incremental.
The backup server is a Windows 2008 server.
Not using replication at the moment, will be later on.

[foggy]

I think you will be ok with just the default proxy server. Btw, a good thread about proxy server scoping, can be useful.

[systeembeheerder]

Still fighting a bit with the speed of the transferred data.
Only seeing 6 to 9 MB/s at a 500Mbps line seems a bit low.
When the source is on site a and the backup on site b (Windows Server 2008R2 with direct attached storage (Dell MD1000)), what backup repository do I choose?
Do I use the Microsoft Windows Server or the Shared Folder SMB?
Which one will have the better performance?

[foggy]

What does the bottleneck stats say for this job?

When backing up offsite to CIFS share, make sure you put a proxy on the target side and configure repository to "Write all traffic via this proxy" (then the Veeam agent is started on that target-side proxying server and writes to the CIFS share directly). In case of Windows server repository the agent is started on the repository host itself and data is transferred between agents on source proxy and repository.

[systeembeheerder]

Bottleneck is in all cases: Target.

So there is no real performance preference here to choose Windows Server of CIFS?
Thanx for the tip on the proxy, I had the wrong one there.

[Vitaliy S.]

So there is no real performance preference here to choose Windows Server of CIFS?

If you deploy Veeam backup proxy on the remote site as foggy has advised, then there shouldn't be any noticeable difference.

VM's are Windows servers, about 10 , about 8 linux. total size is 1,8Tb on the main site. backup from the main site will be to the backup site. backup full every month, reversed incremental.

Is there any special reason why you've chosen reversed incremental as your backup mode? Be aware that switching to forward incremental backup mode should increase the overall job performance, as this mode is less stressful for your target storage in terms of total I/O operations performed.

[systeembeheerder]

Hi Vitaliy,

a/Thanx for the clearing that up. By testing is with one server, I did not see any difference also.
b/ We do 2 step backups. step one: daily backup to disk on remote site. Step 2: once a month, one of the backups is backuped to tape. To make that backup, we have to have the same filename everytime this job is run.

[Vitaliy S.]

Got it.

[systeembeheerder]

Just to be sure, as this setting is something leftover op 5.0, forward incremental backup mode with same filename is not possible is it?

[Vitaliy S.]

Forward incremental backup mode does not change the name of the VBK file, since this file is not modified during incremental job runs.