Off Site Backups

[Stampede]

I'm having trouble finding out more information on setting up an offsite backup repository. I have an ESXi server currently running Veeam locally, and I just put together another ESXi server that I want to put offsite to store backups. I found this https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... ackup.html but it doesn't have the details I was looking for.

How do you connect an offsite server to a local one? Is there an options window in Veeam to point to the IP address? These servers will be on the same network so that part will be easy. Are there settings to schedule when to transfer the files to the offsite server?

Thanks!

[csinetops]

Veeam doesn't really care where your veeam proxy servers are, you would add the off site server as a proxy and repository in Veeam. Then create a backup copy job with its own schedule ( or set it as a secondary target in the main job) to make a copy of your backup data. The backup copy job is where you can set what VM's to copy to your remote site, the source and destination repositories, proxies to use etc. Depending on your pipe between sites as well as your Veeam license, you could leverage the WAN acceleration feature in Veeam. See below for more detail, you really need to read up to understand how it all works. I assumed you are on Vmware but look up the guide for hyper V if that applies to you.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... _copy.html
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... proxy.html
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/hyp ... drepo.html
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... igure.html

Let me know if you have more questions.

[PTide]

Hi,

<...>and I just put together another ESXi server that I want to put offsite to store backups.

Are you going to use ESXi server's storage to store backups? Honestly speaking it's not an optimal solution, so please provide more details on what you're trying to achieve.

Thanks

[Stampede]

Thanks csinetops that's exactly what I was looking for.
Hi PTide, currently we have a VMware host running a Win2012r2 VM which runs all Veeam operations.The server has an attached SAN so we are able to add a number of 1-2 TB vDisks to our "Veeam" VM and save & organize our backups. We chose to use ESXi as the base because should we need to restore a backup locally we have that ability vs only restoring to our primary vCenter environment.

Having that same ability to restore locally is even more important for our offsite server because it can act as D.R., should our local infrastructure go down for any reason we can restore all our VM's onto the offsite server and keep business going as usual.

That's the plan at least, open to suggestions.

[csinetops]

Just as a side note, you could always use replica's for your DR scenario if you have the resources available at your secondary site. This way you don't have to wait on restore times (faster RTO) , you just fail over to the replicas at your DR site.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... ation.html

There is also lots to read up on and consider when recovering to a DR site if your primary is down. Remember, if your primary is down you won't have domain services or VCenter etc. All things to think through and test. Make sure your Veeam config is backed up to your DR site so you can fire up a Veeam management server and restore your config at the DR site to actually fail over the VM's, restore etc.

[foggy]

Another thing to think about (and what Pavel meant in his post) is that storing backups on virtual disk is not the best practice. A better solution would be to mount the NTFS formatted SAN LUNs to Veeam B&R VM directly over iSCSI.

[PTide]

Also please take a look at this article to get some info about backup repository best practices.

Thanks