Veeam Backup Strategy

[ermer]

We just purchased a new NetApp and would like to redesigning our backup strategy. The new SAN has 400TB of usable storage that is split between server storage (SAS and SSD) and CIFS/Backup (SATA). Previously we have been using a VMware virtual repository server with disk directly attached to the VM. Doing some sample testing, we were able to achieve 152MB/sec using a CIFS repository on the new NetApp as apposed to 160MB/sec on the VM repository server. For the little difference is speed, it seems easier to use a CIFS repository that we can easily grow and SnapMirror the data to a secondary site. Are there any downsides to doing this? Any tips to increase performance even more?

Second, we would like to change our retention policy. Currently we only keep 10 restore points of forward forever backups. We would like to change this to 8 of forward forever plus 4 weekly backups? Should I just create a second job that does a full backup with 4 restore points scheduled weekly? Should I choose forward forever synthetic backups for this job or an active full backup? Thank you.

[MichaelCade]

Hi there what licensed version of Veeam are you using as this will determine what capabilities and features you have available with both Veeam and our integration with NetApp.

[ermer]

We are running the Enterprise version.

[foggy]

We would like to change this to 8 of forward forever plus 4 weekly backups? Should I just create a second job that does a full backup with 4 restore points scheduled weekly? Should I choose forward forever synthetic backups for this job or an active full backup? Thank you.

You can either have a second backup job that runs weekly or a backup copy job with weekly sync interval.

[ermer]

Any suggestions to use either a synthetic or active full?

[foggy]

If you decide to go with a second weekly backup job, then you can set it to perform active full each time.

[Vitaliy S.]

Are there any downsides to doing this? Any tips to increase performance even more?

What is the bottleneck statistics for this backup job?

Any suggestions to use either a synthetic or active full?

If target storage is not a bottleneck, then I would go with backup copy jobs and synthetic fulls.

[ermer]

The bottleneck is the source disk. Network is always under 5% and target below 20%.

We will go with copy jobs and then synthetics fulls for those. Thanks.

[ermer]

Going into the new backup job to set this up, I have the following.

Job 1 will be incremental scheduled Monday through Saturday with 8 restore points.

Job 2 will be synthetic full scheduled on Sunday only with 4 restore points.

I will then create copy jobs for each to replicate the data to another site. Is this correct?

[foggy]

Consider also implementing SureBackup jobs for backups recoverability testing and enabling health check in backup copy jobs to ensure recoverable data exists in both locations.

[ermer]

Will do. Thanks.