Comprehensive data protection for all workloads
Post Reply
Jimoc
Lurker
Posts: 2
Liked: never
Joined: Jun 06, 2017 10:37 am
Full Name: James O Connell

Suitability of Veeam for DR without VMs.

Post by Jimoc »

Hi all,
firstly let me introduce myself and give a little background on my situation.
I work for a (currently) small company and when I started here our backups consisted of backing up our linux server to removable usb with Acronis which were swapped each week.
We have 5 windows pcs which were not being backed up at all.
i have since added the 5 pcs to the backup schedule and they are all being backed up to the removable storage.
I experimented with using Cloudberry backup to try and backup to AWS but gave it up as a bad job after it kept failing randomly.
Instead of that I have mounted an S3 bucket on the server and do a sync to it after each nightly backup to get the incremental files.

Before the company expands too much to where DR becomes a burden I want to try and get a feasible plan in place.
We currently have a DR plan which consists of "purchase new hardware, restore from backups." but I want to put a real DR plan in place.
My idea was that we backup to AWS and in the case of disaster we restore from backup to AWS EC2 instances allowing us to get up and running faster while waiting on new physical hardware.

Now after that long preamble this leads into my question of whether Veeam is the solution to my issue or not.
From looking at it seems to be focused more on VM Backup and Restore than physical machines which is what we currently have.

My plan for DR would be as follows :
1. Backup Server to AWS S3 bucket.
2. Backup each PC individually to AWS S3 bucket.
3. Incremental backups each day to AWS with 1 month retention policy.
4. Configure AWS networking and security to match our internal setup.
5. Create an AWS instance with restore software installed on it.
5. Use this instance to restore directly from the S3 bucket to new AWS instances.
6. Test everything by restoring each instance from S3 to AWS.

Now onto my specific questions.
1. Is my plan feasible using Veeam?
2. Is it feasible using the free versions available or would I need a purchased licence?
3. Given that the licensing cost is per host cpu and we dont have any hosts how would licensing be calculated in this case.

Thanks for any help you can give me and if this is in the wrong forum please feel free to move it to the correct place.

Regards,
James.
skrause
Veteran
Posts: 487
Liked: 105 times
Joined: Dec 08, 2014 2:58 pm
Full Name: Steve Krause
Contact:

Re: Suitability of Veeam for DR without VMs.

Post by skrause »

1. Backing up physical endpoints is definitely possible with Veeam agents, though I am not sure about the use of S3 buckets as a repository. I have not looked that deeply into the new version of the agent or S3
2. If you want to orchestrate everything centrally you will need to purchase the appropriate licenses.
3. Veeam agents are not licensed per VM host socket, they are licensed per-agent.
Steve Krause
Veeam Certified Architect
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: Suitability of Veeam for DR without VMs.

Post by foggy »

Hi James, since you're looking to backup physical servers, then you should look at Veeam Agent for Windows/Linux offerings, like Steve's suggested. They can store backups either in a local repository or at one of our cloud providers. You can read more about that here. Also this thread will be useful.
evander
Enthusiast
Posts: 86
Liked: 5 times
Joined: Nov 17, 2011 7:55 am
Contact:

Re: Suitability of Veeam for DR without VMs.

Post by evander »

DR should be a multi-phased approach and it sounds to me like you would benefit to rather go the virtualization route.
You say you have a Linux server right, so virtualize that and then you can use the same server hardware as your DR plan for your desktop machines. If they ever die you can restore using Veeam Windows Agent to a virtual Windows box(s) in minutes. You can also add additional virtual servers (windows or Linux) as you expand.
If the Server dies you can recover the Linux box using Veeam agent for Linux onto a desktop machine that you may have spare or keep as spare until the server is fixed.
If you want DR in case the building fell down, then backup to an offsite server or something like AWS.

I say all of that because you have an on-premise server, but if that is not a necessity then just run everything in the cloud and then your DR is largely taken care of for you. If you can move your Linux box into the cloud and performance is the same, do it. For the desktop machines just keep all important data in the cloud like OneDrive or Dropbox etc and if it dies buy a new one and sync back.
It really all depends on what type of work your company does and what can and cant realistically be cloud based.
You don't mention how your company does things like Email, Directory services, file sharing etc but if I was a company your size I would buy into Office 365 which takes care of everything you probably need including Office, Exchange Email, SharePoint, Data Storage in OneDrive for Business, Skype for business, Collaboration etc etc etc. You can even chuck out your onsite PBX if you have one and go with MS Cloud PBX if that was a need. And then of course you can even put your Linux box in Microsoft Azure if you wanted.
Again it all depends but rather than look to backup TO the cloud like are doing now, maybe look to sit in the cloud and then you can always backup back to on-premise using Veeam Agents and Veeam for Office 365
if you wanted too.
Jimoc
Lurker
Posts: 2
Liked: never
Joined: Jun 06, 2017 10:37 am
Full Name: James O Connell

Re: Suitability of Veeam for DR without VMs.

Post by Jimoc »

Hi guys,
Thanks for all the great replies, its given me a lot to think about in regards to DR and whats the best approach for us.
I've downloaded Veeam and I'm currently playing around with it to see what I can achieve and also looking at some other ways of setting up a quick switch over environment in case of disaster.
I think given my budget constraints and time limitations I may just end up cloning our physical machines as AMI instances and refreshing them once a month or so and in the worst case scenario then restoring the latest incremental backup to the AWS instances if I need to.
ortoscale
Service Provider
Posts: 246
Liked: 20 times
Joined: Aug 02, 2011 9:30 pm
Full Name: Matjaž Antloga
Location: Celje, Slovenia
Contact:

Re: Suitability of Veeam for DR without VMs.

Post by ortoscale »

I think optimal option if budget allows it is to buy license for 5 workstations and find service provider. We are also offering self DR in VMware vCloud for such cases (testing phase).
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 279 guests