VMware View: best practices backing up VDI server & clients

[DataAssure]

Do we just treat it like any one of guest instances? or VMware has some whitepapers or best practice guides published for protecting the VDI servers & clients. One of our requirements is <1hr RPO & RTO. TIA

[Gostev]

No, you cannot treat them as regular VMs - vStorage API does not support linked clones. Protection approach depends on how you have VDI deployed. If you are using roaming profiles, then you backup file server holding them with Veeam. If you are using persistent disks with local profiles, you should be able to back them up with Veeam using disk exclusion settings (select only this disk for backup).

And in both cases, you will need to protect your "base" images somehow by maintaining backup copy of it.

Hope this helps.

[whynotq]

the VDI servers need to have the SQL databases backed up however if you use replica connection brokers and NLB then you could avoid backing these up unless you are protecting against a complete site outage in which case you are needing a BC solution rather than DR.

to keep going you need Broker and VM's to provision you need vCentre as well but the SQL is key.

Feature request please tools for VDI...

Paul

[DataAssure]

What are the sequences of not having the Veeam SQL databases backed up "properly"? Yes, I do need both a BCP & DRP.
If I read the FAQ correctly, Veeam lic agreement DOES allow us to install Veeam B&R on both physical "and" virtual machine and iniate backup/replication jobs concurrently for the same vSphere host. Right?

[Vitaliy S.]

What are the sequences of not having the Veeam SQL databases backed up "properly"?

If you're talking about not enabling application aware image processing, then in most cases, crash consistent backups for low activity SQL server will work fine. If you want to be 100% sure, or if you SQL server has significant load, then you need to enable that option.

If I read the FAQ correctly, Veeam lic agreement DOES allow us to install Veeam B&R on both physical "and" virtual machine and iniate backup/replication jobs concurrently for the same vSphere host. Right?

Yes, you can use the same license file on multiple Veeam Backup servers. Enteprise Manager will keep track of consolidated license usage.

[bartvincke]

[merged]

hi,
one of our customers has a vmware view 4.5 environment consisting of linked clones.
I would like to back these up with Veeam.
The customer is atm still using v4

I can't seem to be able to back up any of the vdi's, probably because they are linked clones.
I do need to find a way however.

The desktops consist of 3 drives, boot ( linked clone ), temp drive and a persistent data drive.
It's the persistent data drive I really need because this one consists of all the actual userdata.
I already tried to create a job that only backups drive 1:0 ( which is for all desktops the persistent data drive ) but to no avail.

Does v5 include a proper way to handle linked clones or at least backup these peristent disks ?
If this is the case I would have a good argument to get the customer to upgrade to the lastest version.

[whynotq]

Hello,

anyone have any thoughts or experience of backing up desktop images that are linked clones so that they can be restored as "full" individual machines later?

Scenario that has crossed my desk is being looked at from an Avamar product specialist but that requires a unique agent in each machine which isn't going to happen easily in View Linked Clones, their loss .

What we are being asked is, client has 500 desktops as linked clones, scheduled refresh/recompose monthly, security staff require backups of all machines so that they can go back up to 60 days to recover individual user data files.

My thinking is that this is ideal for Veeam as it will see the Linked clones as individual machines for backup but will then benefit from the deduplication ratio that linked clones will obviously have.

Any thoughts, experiences or "left field" ideas welcomed.

Paul

[ThomasYeo]

[merged]

hi,

any one have best way to Backup and replicate of View Desktop? between Production and DR site.

/Thanks

[Slowrider5]

I would love to see a clarification here from an official Veeam employee as to whether this truly works. I did see that Gostev is a Product Manager, so I would like to trust that answer. However, in the follow-up comments there is a claim by another user that it did not work for him.

Also, I had been told by a Veeam field resource that the answer should be yes, because in general if you can snapshot the disk then Veeam should be able to back it up. Then I noticed this link on the VMware site that said a user couldn't snapshot the persistent disk because it is marked independent:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/339861

So, to sum it up, I'm not looking for a should, could, or it might work. I'm looking for a clear answer as to whether Veeam can back up a user data disk / persistent disk in a View 4.6 or 5 environment.

[Gostev]

We have not specifically tested our product with VMware View (and not planning, at least in the short term), so there is no official support.

[tsightler]

Actually, this is easy to answer. Veeam cannot backup the user data disk because the UDD cannot be snapshotted. If you use roaming profiles or a personal management tool (either third-party for View 4.x, or the built in for View 5), these solutions typically store the user persistent data on a central NAS server and Veeam can backup that server if it is virtual. Veeam can of course also backup the View infrastructure servers assuming they are virtual.

[Vevelt]

What about Licensing in VDI scenario?
We have Veeam B&R licensed for our cluster with server vms (10 Hosts, 20 CPUs), but it would be quite expensive to have licenses for our VDI cluster also (16 to 20 Hosts, 32 to 40 CPUs)... there are many pools with linked clones (only the template should be backed up) but also a few individual vms we would like to backup. Are there plans to provide special licensing for VDI which isn't counted by CPU?

[Gostev]

We have no plans to change licensing at this time.

[mjuca]

What about the backup of VDI golden desktop images with multiple snapshots?
These VMs are typically not running and I was wondering if there is a way of using Veeam to backup these images including snapshots?

[Vitaliy S.]

Marcus, backup of snapshots is not supported. The backup file will include a single VMDK per disk with the "consolidated" state captured in it (meaning, the current VM state as hypervisor would see it if you were to power on the VM). Thanks!

[warix]

Hello,
I have on question about vmware view and veeam.

Is it possible to replicate my view infratrsuture in a second site with veeam, and if the first site crash i can strt to the second?

Excuse me for my english I'm french.

Thanks for your help.

[nurbi76]

Hi all,
I've a customer with VMware View 5.1 and we are looking for implementing Veeam Backup & Replication jobs. What about Golden images of Virtual Desktops? Is there a possibility to handle that VMs or veeam solution can protect only Server VMs.

Thanks for support.

Bye
Nick

[giddyup]

Anyone backing up their VMware View connection brokers and security servers with Veeam?

[dellock6]

Hi Chad,
yes I do at several customers, basically you can backup as usual any "server" component of a View deploy. Forget as usual also saving linked clones as they cannot be snapshotted, but most of all because you can design them to be disposable, using folder redirection and roaming profiles, or persona management, thus keeping all user data in a file server (that can be saved too).

Luca.

[Yuya]

Hello,

I want to backup of the VDI environment.
It was written that it does not support link clone to the next article.
Also do not support current?
http://forums.veeam.com/vmware-vsphere- ... t6517.html

I have some questions.
Please help me.

1)
There is a VDI that configured the persistent disk.
Can they create a backup of this persistent disk using Veeam B&R?

2)
Can they restore files from this persistent disk using Veeam B&R?

3)
If they have configured in the roaming profile rather than a persistent disk, can they create a backup of VDI?

***Configuration example***
Virtual desktop configuration:
Number: about 700
System: link clone + user fixed allocation
OS: Windows 8.1
Profile Management:
Local profile
PersistentDISK (10GB / User)
Hardware:
Server: Cisco UCS B200M3 / vSphere ESXi
Storage: EMC VNX5400
Backup Destination Storage: EMC DataDomain DD620

Yuya

[Shestakov]

Hello Yuya,
As you can see your post has been merged with the existing related one. Please read posts of the topic and ask additional questions if you have any.
Also this post can be useful. Thanks.

[stanj]

I ran a backup test on a Horizon View VM that has 3 drives shown in the vCenter VM settings and only the c: drive was backed up.

Is there a process to backup a View VM?

[DGrinev]

Hi,

Do keep in mind that Veeam B&R doesn't support independent disks (as these disks are excluded from VM snapshots automatically by vSphere) and that's can be the reason.
You can try to use Veeam agent for Windows (ex-VEB) for backing up these VMs.
Please review existing discussion for additional information. Thanks!

[soylent]

The existing discussion is from 2012, has anything changed? Does Veeam B&R have any way to back up a Horizon VDI desktop?

[DGrinev]

Hi,

There were no changes in the discussed scenario. Thanks!

[smithaetg]

We are wanting to use Veeam Backup and Recovery to backup a customer's VMware Horizon View system for disaster recovery. (e.g. If the customer's VMware host gets destroyed, we can just move the virtual servers back onto a new host and start up the VDIs with very little data loss.) A Veeam Engineer pointed me to this discussion thread. So I've read through this discussion thread and the other related discussion threads that this thread linked to. Having read all of that though, I still have questions and I want to make sure I'm interpreting the answers given in these threads so that I have a good grasp of Veeam's stance on backing up VMware's Horizon View system before I go back to the customer and promise them that Veeam can backup and recover their Horizon View system.

As of 2018, Veeam does not officially support Horizon View protection. Three years later (it's now 2021), has that stance changed?

If that stance hasn't changed, according to the threads I've read, the unofficial way to have Veeam backup the Horizon View system is to backup the View server VMs, the View related SQL server, and the View related file server. Backing all of this up should protect the VDI golden images, the roaming profiles and customer files for non-persistent VDI VMs, and the VDI infrastructure (Composer, Connections, Security, etc. server VMs).

Am I correct in my understanding?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Aaron,

As of 2018, Veeam does not officially support Horizon View protection. Three years later (it's now 2021), has that stance changed?

Yes, there were no changes in that regards.

If that stance hasn't changed, according to the threads I've read, the unofficial way to have Veeam backup the Horizon View system is to backup the View server VMs, the View related SQL server, and the View related file server. Backing all of this up should protect the VDI golden images, the roaming profiles and customer files for non-persistent VDI VMs, and the VDI infrastructure (Composer, Connections, Security, etc. server VMs).

Am I correct in my understanding?

Yes, but you need to test the entire procedure before committing to this with your client.

Thanks!

[smithaetg]

Vitaliy S,
Thank you very much for that concise answer. I will definitely be doing some testing before I commit to this with the client!

Aaron

[mporliod]

Hello, I would like to backup VDI virtual machines, are there any precautions to be performed? or are treated as normal backups.

[HannesK]

Hello,
the key question is, whether you use linked clones or not. Please see above (I merged your question to one of the existing threads, please use forum search )

Best regards,
Hannes