Veeam server as off-host backup proxy?

[conradblack]

Heya,

I'm in a smaller environment, and we have a Dell R720 as a Veeam server. We have direct attached storage through a PERC H730 RAID controller and this houses our main backup repository.

We wanted to use this Dell Veeam server as an off-host backup proxy to take some load off of our hypervisors. We've created an off-host proxy that is configured as "This server" and we have the hyper-v role on this server. I'm a little confused about the pre-requisites to get this working... The following is from veeam documentation...

"▪ The role of an off-host backup proxy can be assigned only to a physical Microsoft Windows 2008 Server R2 machine with the Hyper-V role enabled, Windows Server 2012 machine with the Hyper-V role enabled or Windows Server 2012 R2 machine with the Hyper-V role enabled.
▪ The off-host backup proxy must have access to the shared storage where VMs to be backed up, replicated or copied are hosted.
▪ To create and manage volume shadow copies on the shared storage, you must install a VSS hardware provider that supports transportable shadow copies on the off-host proxy and the Hyper-V host. The VSS hardware provider is usually distributed as a part of client components supplied by the storage vendor."

We're running the same version of Windows Server, and the off-host backup (the veeam server) obviously has access to the storage where the VMs are being backed up. I'm confused about this last requirement... What do I need to do to get this working?

I get the following message when I try to force it to use the off-host proxy I've created:

"Unable to allocate processing resources. Error: There is no hardware provider for off-host backup detected. Snapshot failover is disabled."

Any help or insights would be greatly appreciated... I'm a tad confused about all this..

[Andreas Neufert]

Your Hyper-V hosts need to be attached to a storage system that can share the storage (to other hyper-v hists and the veeam server).

Then you need a license for Snapshots on it.
Xou need as well implemented Hardware VSS providers of your storage system on sll hyper-v hosts and the Veeam Server.

At bsckup the hyperv host will create a storage snapshot by hardware vss privider and veeam will map it to the offhist proxy for backup

[foggy]

Basically, to enable off-host backup mode, you need to download hardware VSS provider software from the storage vendor and install it on all Hyper-V hosts you are going to backup VMs from as well as off-host backup proxy server.

[conradblack]

Basically, to enable off-host backup mode, you need to download hardware VSS provider software from the storage vendor and install it on all Hyper-V hosts you are going to backup VMs from as well as off-host backup proxy server.

Does this mean unless I have some sort of shared storage then I there is no way for me to use an off-host proxy? My Hypervisors and my Veeam server are all Dell servers with DAS via a PERC RAID controller. I am guessing I am out of luck when it comes to setting up a off-host proxy... is this true?

[Andreas Neufert]

To use an offhost proxy, you need Hyper-V Cluster shared volumes CSV1 or CSV2, a snapshot license on the storage and hardware vss providers installed.

If you use Microsoft SMB3 Storage to store your Hyper-V VMs and you add this system to Veeam, it works like a offhost proxy as well and read data directly from SMB3.

If you have a local disk system with local raid controler you can not use Offhost Backup at Hyper-V nor could you use DirectSAN (DirectStorage) at VMware.

[Blue407]

Morning All

Is it possible to use a off-host proxy without shared storage?

We currently have a Hyper-V Host Server with local storage, the Veeam Backup Server is stand-alone and connected via 10GB dedicated backup network to the Host.
I have created the Proxy role on the Veeam Server and only just realised it doesn't seem to work with my config.

Is there any way around this? All my Host Servers have local storage, but its all available via UNC paths.

[foggy]

Paul, it is not possible to use off-host backup with a local storage.

[Ctek]

Without shared storage, you can't ask your Veeam Server "proxy" to process the local data of the host servers unfortunately.

[Blue407]

Thats a shame, with UNC paths I would have thought that a different server (proxy) could read data from the primary server and process it for backup, thereby reducing the load on the primary server which only has to send out some files.

[Andreas Neufert]

As you anyway have to read the data from the host, why not reduce the data and transport it to another server. This is exactly what our onhost proxy do.