Using VBR 5 in the Local SATA VMFS datastore VM

[albertwt]

Hi All,

I'd like to know if this normal and the proper way of configuring Veeam B&R 5 as VM.

Since there are lots of unused local VMFS datastore VMFS3 on my 3x ESXi servers, I'm planning to install the VBR 5 into Windows Server 2008 R2 VM with very big hard drive size (1 TB VMDK) on each of the local datastore to backup the VM inside the SAN.

What I've got:
VMware vSphere 4 Essential - ESXi 4.0 (no hot add)
Veeam Backup and Replication 5 Standard

Dell Power Edge 2950 with 2.5 TB multiple VMFS3 extent on top of - RAID 5 (6x 500GB SATAII 7200rpm)
Dell MD3000i iSCSI SAN over Gigabit Ethernet

The Windows Server 2008 R2 VM configuration:
2x CPU @ 2.33 GHz
4 GB RAM
VMXNet3 NIC --> for better connectivity of the backup between the local ESXi datastore and the iSCSI-SAN datastore.

Here is the reason I'm doing this is that:
1. I don't have the extra NIC to connect my physical server into the iSCSI SAN switch, therefore i can't use -SAN backup mode.
2. I only use the lowest VMware license available which doesn't support hardware Hot-add feature.

Would this be optimal configuration ?

Any kind of help and suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Albert,

Using Virtual Appliance backup mode doesn't require Hot-add feature to be licensed. You may use Virtual Appliance mode even with your VMware Essential license. You should be fine with this configuration, though to get the best performance possible you should grant a Veeam backup VM with 4 vCPU.

Hope it helps!

[albertwt]

4vCPU, ok thanks for the reply this ESXi server is running on dual quad core Xeon so it should be fine.
so regarding the networking part, shall i create one vNIC per iSCSI path connected to my ESXi ?

[Gostev]

VMware vSphere 4 Essential - ESXi 4.0 (no hot add)

What do you mean by no hot add?
ESX4 U1: Hot Add backups for everyone!

[albertwt]

because my license is the most basic one so i think i don't have the capability for the hardware hot-add on the fly

[Gostev]

Did you actually read the link in my previous post?