B&R optimal setup

[twwabw]

Newbie here- trying to make sure I promote the best scenario for my client. I've read through lots of these threads , documentation, etc., and believe I have this right. I defer to the Statesmen here for their opinions .
- (2) Hyper-V hosts: (1) 2012, (1) 2012R2
- Total of 10 VMs hosted
- total current app 4TB data
- remote office available for offsite copy, VPN tunnel between sites

I want to install new 2012R2 server running Veeam B&R, backup all VMs. New Dell server, direct attached storage, H710 Raid, Raid 10 (probably 2 arrays)

My questions are
- on the new server, should I install Hyper-V role, so Instant Recovery can be done on this server in the event of major or physical disaster to exiting Hyper-V host servers? I did this in my test lab- and it seems to work very well. I realize this has implication of hardware requirements on the B&R server, enough resources to run the VMs on itself if necessary. (memory, processor, etc.) It just seems to make sense to provide the capability, since imagining a hardware failure on one of the primary hosts is one of the main things to protect against.

I'm also having a hard time understanding the Instant Recovery concept. I've tested it on my lab setup, but it seems that it re-creates a new VHD in all methods. Since a couple of my VMs have 2TB of data- the thought of recreating those VHDs either locally or back onto the original host seems contrary to the whole concept of "Instant"-. My perception was that the recovery VM can actually boot / run of the backup file itself. Am I all wet here, or just doing the Instant recovery all wrong?

Thanks for any input!!

[foggy]

Hi Tim and welcome.

1. Yes, you can enable Hyper-V role on the backup server with the purpose of using it for Instant Recovery.
2. Your understanding is correct, instantly recovered VMs run directly from the backup file.

[Shestakov]

- on the new server, should I install Hyper-V role, so Instant Recovery can be done on this server in the event of major or physical disaster to exiting Hyper-V host servers? I did this in my test lab- and it seems to work very well. I realize this has implication of hardware requirements on the B&R server, enough resources to run the VMs on itself if necessary. (memory, processor, etc.) It just seems to make sense to provide the capability, since imagining a hardware failure on one of the primary hosts is one of the main things to protect against.

Yes, so it will also work as Off-Host Backup Proxy if you have Hyper-V host and off-host proxy connected to the shared storage .

I'm also having a hard time understanding the Instant Recovery concept. I've tested it on my lab setup, but it seems that it re-creates a new VHD in all methods. Since a couple of my VMs have 2TB of data- the thought of recreating those VHDs either locally or back onto the original host seems contrary to the whole concept of "Instant"-. My perception was that the recovery VM can actually boot / run of the backup file itself. Am I all wet here, or just doing the Instant recovery all wrong?

Your understanding is correct. VBR reads the VM configuration from the backup file, creates a dummy VM with the same settings and empty disks on the destination host > initiates creation of a protective snapshot for the dummy VM and the VM is started.
On the backup repository and on the destination host, VBR deploys a pair of Veeam Data Mover Services that are used to mount the VM disks from the backup file to the dummy VM. Then VBR starts a Veeam driver which redirects requests to the recovered VM and reads necessary data from the backup file on the backup repository via the pair of Veeam Data Mover Services which maintain the disk mount.
Check the step-by-step description to make sure you are doing everything correctly.

Thanks!

[twwabw]

Excellent- the link to the explanation seemed to explain it best. So my understanding is it mounts the new recovery vhd from the backup files, then populates it as it goes, but you can in fact boot the VM quickly, without fully recreating the VHD. So my 2TB vm could be booted quickly, and it will then use the data mover service to fully populate it as it goes?

[Shestakov]

That`s correct.