Unable to backup over WAN with Veeam B+R Community Edition.

[VigilantHiro]

Hello, for a couple of weeks we have been trying to set up a backup from one server at our main location to a server at an off-site location. I've searched the forums and google but haven't come across an explanation for our issues.

At the main location, we've installed the Agent for Microsoft windows, and at the satellite, we've installed Veeam Community Edition. Both servers are Windows 2012 R2. Both locations are behind firewalls which I believe are configured correctly. I've set up a backup repository on the Off-site server with the "Direct Storage" option as our Default repository.
When I set up the agent on the server, I am able to connect to the backup server (port 10001) and I get the repositories and the agent communicates fine, but when we run the backup it fails every time with either a "Timeout to start agent".
Now from what can tell, the backup fails because the Agent is trying to connect directly to the server's private IP address instead of the Public IP/DNS address. I ran Netstat on the machines and can see that the agent Successfully connects to the server on port 10001, then after getting the infrastructure resources, it tries to open a connection to three different private IPs on port 2500, which correlate to the three NICs on the server. Since the server is behind the firewall, the connection fails. Looking at the logfiles, I've confirmed it's attempting to connect to these three IPs, instead of the public IP address.
I tried to switch the backup repository type to CIFS with the server as it's Gateway, but this didn't change the behavior. The backup still attempts to connect to the private IP addresses.
We do have a VPN connection between the networks, and we've been able to start a backup over the VPN, but this saturates the connection and we aren't able to backup in a timely manner.

So my questions here are:
1. Is there some limitation on the community edition where we can't backup over the WAN?
2. Does the server itself have a place to set it as a WAN target with the public IP?

Any help is appreciated.
I'm under the impression Veeam Community Edition doesn't provide support, so I didn't submit a case. Let me know if this is wrong.

[Gostev]

Hello! This is a wrong impression indeed, as you can in fact open support cases with CE - and it is explained following the red link displayed when you click New Topic. Also as explained there, this is not a support forum in any case, and we're unable to provide support over forum posts. Thanks!

[Steelsky]

Despite the "friendly" rejection from the senior management at Veeam does anyone in the community have a few small hints for us who are facing the same problems as Jeremy?

I know for a fact that it is possible I just can't find a guide to how I do it.

In my case I have inherited a server form a previous admin in a hosting environment that will not give me access to either their backup or an export of the server.

I just need it to work twice, the first time to prove to myself that I can pull a working image of an Ubuntu 16.04 over a WAN connection and the second time to do it during a service window where I do the actual move.

Best regards,

Søren Walther

[Steelsky]

Hey guys,

I worked more on my specific problem last night.

My challenge is that I have a server hosted with a provider that is discontinuing that part of their hosting business and they are unwilling to help me with a backup or export of the server.

I have a tenant set up in Azure where I plan to rehome the server and afterwards start the process of analysing what is on there and how we best move forward. The people who had IT responsibility in our organisation before me were more interested in development than operations.

My problem was that the agent on the server tried to call back to 10.x.x.x which is, of course, not routable over the WAN connection to the Veeam server hosted in Azure.

The way I ended up resolving it was to set up an OpenVPN server in Azure and install the OpenVPN client software on the server.

This allows me to pipe 10.0.0.0/24 over to the Azure tenant and for the agent to see the server.

Now I have a few issues getting the Veeamsnap package to install and run properly on the server but since it was after midnight last night when I got there I parked the problem until tonight.

/Søren

[Dima P.]

Hello Søren,

Thank you for sharing the new in this thread. Indeed VPN could be a solution to establish a connection between remote sites, we actually have our own solution Veeam PN which is absolutely free, worth checking.

For out of the box experience I'd recommend you to take a look at Veeam Cloud Connect solution which allows you to build so called cloud repository and use it as a direct destination for your backup agents (when saying direct I mean without the need to setup VPN connection as Cloud repository is accessible for direct connection over WAN). Hope it helps, cheers!