Veeam and Online Archives

[Robb19]

We are just a small company, running one Windows2019 server with HyperV and one VM with a virtual disk size of 3.5 TB.
We have one on-site NAS connected at 1Gb/s and one off-site NAS connected at 100Mb/, Not to bad I would say . The NAs-disks being shared via SMB.
As 3.0 TB of this disk is nèver changing measurement data, only getting more TB, I think incremental backup is overkill.
Especially as Veeam takes dayes for 'merging oldest incremental backup into full backup file' off-site or half a day for 'creating a synthetic full backup' on-site

It would be enough to have one on-site and one off-site copy of the 3.0TB. So I think we need another architectural solution. I have been using RoboCopy, but wonder which other solutions are available: Do we need an extra off-site server? Can we use Windows Storage Replica, or Veeam replication? I feel we should connect the NAS via iSCSI anyway.

Any ideas?

Rob (Case # 03502092)

[HannesK]

Hello,
using a Backup-Copy-Job would be the suggested "Veeam way". Requirement to make it work is a Windows machine as gateway server off-site (for the merges on the SMB share).

Yes, block based backup repositories are recommended.

I don't like the idea, but it might work with really stable connection: iSCSI over WAN with ReFS.

Best regards,
Hannes

[Robb19]

Hi Hannes,

Thanks for your answer. Searching this forum for ReFS and iSCSI shows that Veeam does support ReFS, but iSCSI supporting ReFS is the question.
Meanwhile I will give the online archive its own disk and exclude it form the incremental backup. And start testing with Veeam replication.

Rob

[Robb19]

I connected the remote NAS with iSCSI and ReFS for the copy backup job of windows agents. “Full backup file merge” now uses fast clone and takes about an hour in stead of > 88 hours. So finally we have the first weekly backup using the GFS schema
I can now do the same thing for the VM. However there is an alternative. Add an extra virtual disk to the VM to hold the ‘never changing’ archive and exclude that virtual disk from the VM backup.
Of course I want a onsite and offsite copy of that excluded virtual disk too. How to do that? Make a second, les intensive, VM backup job and copy job, excluding the other virtual disk? Any ideas?

Rob

[HannesK]

Hi,
good to hear that it works.

If there are no changes, I see no reason to exclude the disk as long as you stay with incremental forever backups.

If you really want to exclude, then I would create a second job as you already mentioned.

Best regards,
Hannes