file server windows

[mporliod]

Good morning everyone, I should backup a very large file server exceeding 15 tb, you confirm that it makes no sense to back up the entire VM to have the possibility to restore single files.
the correct solution is to backup the shares with nas backup?

[Mildur]

Hi Massimiliano

This depends on your needs.
In my case, I would prefer to take a vm backup of a windows file server, because I want to have an immutable backup of this fileshares and I want to offload the entire backup to our object storage. The NAS Backup feature wouldn't give me this two possibility. And then there are the license costs. Doing a backup of a VM will cost me 1x license. Doing a FileShare Backup of the entire 15 TB will cost me 30x licenses.

If I want to backup only a few files of this entire Fileserver, I would try to use NAS Backup.
But not for the entire server. It doesn't not meet our business requirements (immutability).

[mporliod]

But if I don't use the immutability it doesn't make sense to take a snapshot of the whole vm, if I have to restore a single file I have to restore the entire disk the waiting times are much longer.

[Mildur]

it doesn't make sense to take a snapshot of the whole vm, if I have to restore a single file I have to restore the entire disk the waiting times are much longer.

If you backup your windows file server with the Veeam Agent or with a VM backup Job, you can restore a single file with the Veeam FLR explorer. You don't have to restore an entire disk to get one file back from the backup.
Can I ask you, where do you have seen the requirement to restore the entire disk for a single file?

Veeam Agent - Guest OS File Restore

Vm Backup - Guest OS File Restore

[mporliod]

then I ask you this question is it faster to restore a single file by having the backup done in the VM backup job mode or with the nas backup feature?

[Mildur]

I don't use NAS Backups in our environment. So I don't have any experience in the restore speeds of NAS Backup.
What restore speeds are you expecting? What is your required RTO for a single file?
I would say, restore speeds for a few single files will not be that different between NAS Backup and VM Backups.

From a VM Backup, if I want to restore a single file (10-20 MB), I have the file restored under 5 minutes from a vm backup. But that mainly depends on the used backup storage and the connection between the mount server and the backup repository.

[vmtech123]

Doing testing I have found NAS backup seems to be quicker than a large VM, but both run pretty quick to restore an individual file.

I wanted to use NAS backup but the license costs are just not worth it (I have many 40TB+ VM's)

We also export backups to tape. In event of a ransomware hit, restoring a whole VM is ideal. However, my issue now is space. Weekly/Monthly's take up space where using the NAS backup I could have versioning and not require as much space, and also keep more data on the storage. We have a bunch of monster VM's, but the change is usually Mb or Gb a day on some of them.

I was thinking of backing up the OS disk (C:\) on the servers, then using NAS backup for the rest. That way I could restore the files, and not have to build servers in an emergency, and still have the granularity. (Maybe Veeam will make this a built in feature one day)

At the end of the day, I think NAS backup is great, but full VM backup is the only way these monster servers won't cost an insane amount.

[Dima P.]

vmtech123,

I was thinking of backing up the OS disk (C:\) on the servers, then using NAS backup for the rest.

Sounds like a good plan. I saw many customers a backing up Operating System volumes once a month while nas jobs protect important files on a daily basis.

At the end of the day, I think NAS backup is great, but full VM backup is the only way these monster servers won't cost an insane amount.

I'd recommend to rely on image level backup whenever you have access to either machine or hypervisor, file level backup is designed around the idea that you dont have access to underlying system and SMB/NFS is all you got.

That way I could restore the files, and not have to build servers in an emergency, and still have the granularity. (Maybe Veeam will make this a built in feature one day)

Can you please elaborate the feature request? You want to combine file level backup and image-level backup into a single job?

Thanks!

[vmtech123]

Something along those lines.. We have monster servers, but the change is minimal.. (lots of old/historical data)
The system drive would be needed for obvious reasons. Perhaps the File level backup could just restore the files to their original location.

I want to be able to restore in the event a server totally dies. NAS backup won't allow that. 100's of thousands of folders and many shares on the servers would make this a very difficult task.. (Image backup fixes it). However we export to tape for long term, and to restore an old file that's a few megs would be great if I had the option to do a FLR restore from tape if Veaam could figure that out. Storing an index with the job and only grabbing the data needed or something.

[Dima P.]

vmtech123,

Understood, thank you for the feedback!

[vmtech123]

"I'd recommend to rely on image level backup whenever you have access to either machine or hypervisor, file level backup is designed around the idea that you dont have access to underlying system and SMB/NFS is all you got."


Thanks for this. I wish more Software companies gave direct specific recommendations instead of "it depends" or "it depends on your environment"

Pretty obvious in this case as we would have to pay hundreds of thousands to use NAS backup for our File servers vs a few k in VUL's or a few Sockets.

Perhaps separate NAS backup and VUL licenses, or NAS BACKUP ONLY licenses might be something Veeam should look at.. TSM is significantly cheaper for the same functionality. Or the option of NAS backup per node/host using X amount of VUL's max.

[Dima P.]

vmtech123,

You are welcome. There is a dedicated license counter - capacity which gives you the ability to put file jobs aside from the instance count, possibly you can get in touch with sales team in case you need VUL counters and capacity counters separated. Thank you!