Hyper-V on Veeam B&R Server

[antspants77]

Hi,

While I'm used to Veeam in a VMware environment, I have just installed my first Veeam B&R to backup a Hyper-V environment.

Config is;

Hosts
2 x Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-v roles
Fully patched with all recommended hotfixes.
4 x 1Gb Nics each
Connects to storage via fibre

Veeam Server
Windows 2012 R2
Veeam v7 R2a
2 x SSD for O/S
32TB local storage for backups
4 x 1Gb NICs
No fibre card

No other physical servers


I want to run SureBackups, but when I tried to create a Virtual Lab on one of the Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-v servers, it says "Virtual lab requires Windows 2012 Hyper-V"

Page 64 of the Veeam 7 B&R User Guide states;
A virtual lab can be configured only on the machine running Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012,
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with the Hyper-V role enabled or
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with the Hyper-V role enabled.

So no wonder I cannot install it. Just wished I hadn't raved about the SureBackup, Sandbox, SQL U-Air features to the customer before installing.

So to get around this until they eventually upgrade to Windows 2012 R2, can I enable the Hyper-V role on the Veeam B&R Server itself to give me this functionality?
Are there any downsides, performance hits, reliability issues?
Is there a best way to do this?

Would running Instant On backups from this Hyper-v host on the backup server perform better, as the storage is local to the Hyper-v host?

Thanks in advance.

[foggy]

Tony, I do not see any issues with running virtual lab on the Veeam B&R server after enabling Hyper-V role on it. Also, access to backup files stored locally will be faster, which should positively affect Instant Recovery and SureBackup tasks performance.