Veeam B&R installed on Hyper-V Server

[TomasAdamec]

Hello,
I would like to ask, if someone could bring more specific reasons or problems, when Veeam Backup and Replication is installed on Hyper-V Server. Is it security, performance or backup reliability problems?

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110
"You must not install Veeam Backup & Replication directly on a Hyper-V host. Such installation may lead to unpredictable system behavior. Instead, install Veeam Backup & Replication on a VM on the host."

[PetrM]

Hi Tomas,

The main reason is that Microsoft does not recommend to install 3rd-party applications on the virtualization host:

The Hyper-V role should be the only role enabled on a server.
This best practice helps keep the host operating system free of roles, features, and applications that aren't required to run Hyper-V.

One more reason is potential unstable functioning of our product: we make different checks on background which are aimed at validating host type, for instance it should be either Hyper-V or Windows Server. If the same host had two different types, it would be challenging to predict the behavior of our business-logic and it can cause some technical issues.

Thanks!

[kens999]

Hi All,

New to Veeam here and evaluating Veeam as a backup solution. Am I understanding correctly that the recommended way to configure Veeam in a stand alone H-V environment is to establish a H-V Guest as the Veeam Backup and Recovery system and for it to co-ordinate the backup of the environment. Presumably Veeam on the guest utilises an agent on the host??

(I have a colleague who says he has set Veeam up directly on stand alone HV Hosts without issue, despite the warnings in the Veeam directions that this is a really bad idea.)

My one concern about this arrangement with Veeam on a H-V guest, is that the full recovery process will not only require re-establishing the H-V host but also require the Veeam Guest to be re-established before the rest can be recovered. Or am I misunderstanding here?

Thanks
Ken

[nikolaj]

Hi Ken,

I'd recommend checking out best practices guides that cover most Veeam products.
As for the deployment scenario, it is generally discouraged to install a backup server on the same hypervisor where all your VMs are running. In the case of a sudden failure of the latter, you might have troubles with the recovery and RTO.

Thanks.

[wishr]

Hi Ken,

In the ideal world, you should have a dedicated DR backup server ready to start performing restores in the case of a major disaster, however, if we are speaking about just evaluation you may install VBR server on a VM.

If you do not have a dedicated VBR server that is isolated from the hypervisor, in the case you've lost the entire hypervisor, the recovery process will look like the following:
1. Spin up a VBR server at any machine (it could be even your PC).
2. Restore configuration from the configuration backup.
3. Start recovering your VMs.

For VM backups we do not require installing any agents on the Hyper-V hosts. The backup is done via Hyper-V APIs.

I'm merging your topic with an existing one - please take a look.

Thanks