Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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wjbeckett
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New to Veeam - Help with Backup Strategy

Post by wjbeckett »

Hi guys,
looking for some guidance on setting up the best backup strategy for our organization.

We currently are using Microsoft DPM and our Compellent SAN for backup and replication to our DR site.
I'm looking to simplify and improve this process. Hence why I'm looking at Veeam.

Currently our DPM server only backs up a hand full of core servers - this obviously needs to change.
Our Dell Compellent SAN is also constantly replicating to our DR site at Volume level. I'm not the biggest fan of this so am looking to scrap both DPM and Compellent SAN replications and move to Veeam to handle both.

Ideally what I'd like to do is the following.

Backups
- Snapshot VM's every 2 hours
- Roll those Snaps to a full at the end of the week - Copy this backup offsite to our DR location
- Monthly backups to offsite and Tape every month
- Yearly backups - once per year

Replication
- Replicate core servers to DR daily


I need to make sure we can fail over to DR at any point if there is a disaster. We have a few servers that are critical to the business and as a result need to have the highest uptime possible as well as being able to restore data from backups with minimal gap.

Traditionally I'm thinking of a G-F-S type policy but would like your thoughts as well on what I could be doing better while including Replication to DR.

If anyone has any insight on what I should be doing please let me know!

Thanks everyone.
William.
foggy
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Re: New to Veeam - Help with Backup Strategy

Post by foggy »

wjbeckett wrote:Backups
- Snapshot VM's every 2 hours
- Roll those Snaps to a full at the end of the week - Copy this backup offsite to our DR location
- Monthly backups to offsite and Tape every month
- Yearly backups - once per year

Replication
- Replicate core servers to DR daily
William, to achieve that, I'd recommend to create backup jobs with bi-hourly schedule and synthetic fulls on weekends. Then use backup copy jobs to copy data offsite with weekly interval and required GFS retention (weekly, monthly, yearly) and daily replication jobs using backups created by these backup copy jobs as a source - to avoid second touch of critical production VMs and duplicate traffic to DR location. Monthly tape out will complete your requirements.
wjbeckett
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Re: New to Veeam - Help with Backup Strategy

Post by wjbeckett »

Hi Foggy,
Thanks so much for the information.

So now if I wanted to copy the snapshots to DR after every run (We have a dedicated 100mb link between head office and our data centre) I'd just make the copy job continuous so it just waits for a new restore point, yes?

With the Synthetic Full's, should I make these run on both Saturday and Sunday or just Sunday? and would it be better to do a Synthetic during the week, on Thursday for example, to reduce time needed for restores? If I go down that route, how do I ensure a fresh Full is taken on Sunday with a Synthetic full taken on Thursday?

Sorry for all the questions. I just want to make sure I have this setup correctly.
PTide
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Re: New to Veeam - Help with Backup Strategy

Post by PTide »

Hi,
So now if I wanted to copy the snapshots
Continuous here means that once backup copy locates new restore points that match the specified "copy every" interval, it will start copying VM backup. So you would have to set "copy every" interval to match your backup job schedule (2 hours).
With the Synthetic Full's, should I make these run on both Saturday and Sunday or just Sunday?
No need to do that on both days because the difference between those two synthetics would be equal to one increment while two fulls would take a significant amount of space.
and would it be better to do a Synthetic during the week, on Thursday for example, to reduce time needed for restores?
You can do that. Frequent fulls reduce restoration times because of smaller amount of incrementals to be consolidated, indeed, but requires more space as well.
how do I ensure a fresh Full is taken on Sunday with a Synthetic full taken on Thursday?
not sure what you mean, please elaborate.

Thank you.
wjbeckett
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Re: New to Veeam - Help with Backup Strategy

Post by wjbeckett »

Thanks for the response.

This is what I'm trying to achieve.
Sunday - Full backup
Monday - incremental
Tuesday - Incremental
Wednesday - Incremental
Thursday - Synthetic Full
Friday - Incremental
Saturday - Incremental

In this case would I just make it Incremental backups with a full on Thursday and Sunday?

In the above schedule with GFS retention, when it comes to the weekly will it condense the backups to one "Weekly" backup? Same with monthly and yearly? Will the backups be rolled up into the monthly and yearly? Or will it take new backups?

I hope this makes sense.
PTide
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Re: New to Veeam - Help with Backup Strategy

Post by PTide »

In this case would I just make it Incremental backups with a full on Thursday and Sunday?
I don't see any problems with such schema. Synthetic on Thursday would be merciful to your production storage (in case you have 24 hours load) since it takes snapshot that is smaller than Active Full's snapshot. Active Fulls on Sundays will ensure that you have a restore point in case some of your incrementals were corrupted (synthetic full in this case will be corrupted as well).
<...>will it condense the backups to one "Weekly" backup?<...>Or will it take new backups?
No, it won't take new backups. GFS policy allows you to put your weeklies-monthlies-yearlies aside from your primary chain so those full restore points not get deleted by retention. Please check this guide for details. If you want to see how it works graphically, please follow the link.

Thank you.
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