Remote / Branch Office backup design considerations

[Vmagic]

Hello everybody,

I have a branch office that is considering to run a few VMs that I would like to backup to our HQ. What is the design best practice regarding this?

- We are considering to use the "free" esxi version on our hosts, not really a veeam question, but any drawbacks of using this? We will only have 1 physical host so no need for vmotion etc.
- Veeam licensing considerations? 1 veeam licensce per physical cpu ?
- Bandwidth between remote site and HQ is good, 100Mbit. Should I backup directly to disk at HQ or deploy a backup proxy VM at the remote site?
- Should I add local storage to the physical host where I store the backups and then run backup copy jobs to HQ to minimize RTO ? If yes, any other similar/cheaper options that would suffice? backup to local nas etc? recommendations?

Thanks!

[veremin]

We are considering to use the "free" esxi version on our hosts, not really a veeam question, but any drawbacks of using this? We will only have 1 physical host so no need for vmotion etc.

You won't be able to backup/replicate VMs residing on those hosts. Free ESX(i) isn’t supported by Veeam Backup and Replication since it has certain vSphere API blocked.

Veeam licensing considerations? 1 veeam licensce per physical cpu ?

Kindly, take a look at our sticky FAQ, licensing questions as well as many others are covered there.

Should I backup directly to disk at HQ or deploy a backup proxy VM at the remote site?

The closer proxy to source VM(s) the better. I would recommend deploying a proxy server in remote site, so that, backup data will cross the link in compressed and deduplicated state.

Should I add local storage to the physical host where I store the backups and then run backup copy jobs to HQ to minimize RTO ?

You can either use only backup jobs or combination of backup and backup copy jobs. The latter is recommended, though, because with that approach you would have more than one copy of your backup data.

Thanks.