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Kirito83
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Veeam Backup / Backup Copy Same SAN (Planning)

Post by Kirito83 »

Hello Everyone,
I have a unique situation and am looking for some advice, Keep in mind this is only a test environment right now so it's not a huge issue as of yet but we do plan at some point in time to make this a production environment so I want to make sure we get this right.

Our Situation
Basically we bought a Nimble SAN to store some backups on, when we bought it, the company we went through set everything up according to our specifications (We wanted all backups and retention backups to be saved to this SAN due to a limited budget), We were told this could be done so we moved forward with buying the SAN, Once everything was setup and Veeam was installed we started making LUNS (4 Backup Repositories, 50 TB Each Thin Provisioned) then started making Backup Jobs, To make this easier our rep created a scale out repository and placed the 4 Luns in to this repository that way we would have a single large pool for storage, which was good, Next they created a backup copy job which pointed to the same repository where the backup jobs saved to, Now since we are new to veeam we just shrugged it off, however as time went by, we realized the backup copy jobs were failing because it detected it was on the same storage as our main backups, this of course caused some issues but no worries our rep had a solution, we could simply blow away the Backup copy job and create a new one, this time we would create a shared folder and give it a name such as Retention_1 and store it on our nimble (We have drives H, I, J, K), so for each local drive on Veeam, we now have a H:\Backup and H:\Retention_1 (Shared) folder then we would simply add the Retention_1 as a CIFS Share and add it to a new Retention Scale Out repository. This worked good ... for a while, but we began having issues a few weeks later (Won't get in to that here as this is currently a test environment and we want to make sure to get it right prior to production). So here is our setup now and I have a few questions about this.

Backup Jobs save to Nimble Lun1,2,3,4, which has 4 vmdk files (H:\, I:\, J:\ and K:\) each lun has a folder called Backup and are in scale out Repository Backup 1.
Backup Copy Jobs save to Nimble Lun 1,2, 3,4 (On the local drives H:\, I:\ J:\ and K:\) in a folder called Retention but were added as the share name (Retention X (Where X is 1,2,3,4) depending on the LUN and are in Scale Out repository Retention 1.

Our Hardware / Software
Nimble Virtual Server (Located on Compellent SAN)
300 TB Compellent ISCSI SAN (Production Enviroment)
300 TB Nimble ISCSI SAN (Nimble Backup SAN)
Software - Veeam Backup and Replication 9.5 U3

Questions
Question #1:Could we, instead of creating CIFS shares, create a folder on each drive (H:\, I:\, J:\ and K:\) named Retention Pol and add it to a new repository like Scale Out Retention Repository 2 and point our backup copy job to save in that location or would Veeam see this as being on the same storage as the backup jobs and cause the Backup copy job to error out?
Question #2: What would the best method be to store both backup jobs and backup copy jobs on one SAN (In our case Nimble).
Question #3: Is this actually a supported backup method by Veeam?
Question #4: Does Veeam have any documentation stating that with Veeam 9.5 U3 it is not supported to save backup copy jobs on the same SAN as the Backup jobs (If this applies)?

The issue is we cannot currently afford another SAN for backup and placing the data on our production SAN is out of the question as we are already low on space as it is with that, So please keep that in mind, as I have to find a way to make this work, Since this is a test environment I am open to suggestions, Ideally I would rather have a smaller SAN for Daily backups then a larger separate SAN for the backup copy jobs, that way we have 2 different SANS which would eliminate this problem, however that isn't currently an option for us right now.
DeadEyedJacks
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Re: Veeam Backup / Backup Copy Same SAN (Planning)

Post by DeadEyedJacks »

As you've discovered Backup Copy Jobs need to target a distinct repository than the source Backup Job, your workaround doesn't really achieve this.
Here we have three LUNs in a SOR for Backup Jobs and a separate LUN and repository as target for Backup Copy Jobs, all on same Compellent SAN, this is acceptable and works fine.
foggy
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Re: Veeam Backup / Backup Copy Same SAN (Planning)

Post by foggy »

Pointing backup copy to another repository (different folder) on the same storage is totally supported (though not generally recommended due to the fact that should you lose the storage, you lose everything including backup copies).
TaylorB
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Re: Veeam Backup / Backup Copy Same SAN (Planning)

Post by TaylorB »

I'm confused as to why you would want copies of the backup files on the same SAN? If you want additional restore points, just set the job settings to keep more. But having additional copies of those backup files on the same SAN doesn't provide additional protection, it just wastes disk by duplicating everything.
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