Whats the ideal setup for B&R on a single site

[craig.maxwell]

Hello,

We have recently purchased VEEAM B&R 9.5 for our single site, small school.
I have read a bunch of best practise articles but still can’t figure out the ideal setup for B&R for our site.
If anybody has any recommendations for our setup, please do post.

Our site, equipment and setup:
-1 site, 3 separate buildings, all connected with fibre.
-Building1 = Server room - 1x Hyper-V 2016 Host1 with 8 VMs (MS & Linux = 4TB), + 1x MS RDS 2016 server Host2.
-Building2 = DR site - 1x Hyper-V 2016 Host3 with VEEAM as a VM, + 1x Hyper-V 2016 Host4 currently holds MS replicas.
-Building2 also has a Thecus8900 NAS1 for daily backups, with 2x 4 HDD RAID5s (8TB + 12TB). NAS can support iSCSI but currently using SMB share (with hope to stop crypto virus infection).
-Building3 = QNAP412 NAS2 with 12TB RAID5 for 3 year. NAS can support iSCSI but currently using SMB share (with hope to stop crypto virus infection).

Aim:

Building1 to run production and RDS servers, possibly virtualise RDS server so it can also be replicated in case of disaster.
Building2 to be backup and DR site. VEEAM to backup daily to Thecus NAS1 with 1 month retention, and monthly to Building3 QNAP NAS2 with 3 year retention. Implement VEEAM for replicas instead of MS.

Questions:

-What’s the best backup method/settings to use: GFS, Backup Copy Job, forward incremental, synthetic ect.
-How would I convert/setup the current HV replica Host4 to use VEEAM for replica instead of MS.

I do have many more questions but I’m hoping to get some rough ideas with start the ideal setup for this site.

Any help, articles or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks

Craig

[Andreas Neufert]

Hi Craig.

First let me say that you missed the daily backup copy in your concept which I highly would suggest to do.

Create separate NAS users (different passwords) and make sure that no windows user ever had access to the shares. Go to Veeam and add 2 CIFS repository and add only the credentials there.
Create a daily backup job with 30days retention to one of the NAS shares.
Create a backup copy job with 2-30 daily restorepoint sand select the needed GFS points (monthly you said).


Regarding veeam replication
stop ms replication
add the target host to veeam
Create replica jobs for the VM with the added host as target.
Runnthe Veesm Jobs. If Veeam jobs work and have all needed restorepoint, delete the MS replica target VMs.

[craig.maxwell]

Hi Andreas,

Thank you for the helpful and informative reply.

The only problem I have is that the current Hyper-V replica server is 80% full, so I can't run all the VEEAM replications while the MS replica are still on the same host.
I guess I will have to delete the MS first then run the VEEAM replica.

We currently have a VEEAM essentials licence that allows for 1 host backup, do you know if I will need a further license to use the VEEAM replica feature to another host?

Many Thanks

Craig

[Andreas Neufert]

replica targets do not need a license.
If you backup from there, you need a license.

[craig.maxwell]

Thank you Andreas