Automatically sync repositories on DR server

[Vejete]

Sorry, dumb question time.

I have a primary site and a secondary site. Each site has its own VBR Enterprise Plus server. We also have Enterprise Manager deployed at the primary site. I have backup jobs at the primary site that then get copied to repositories physically located at the secondary site. Does Veeam offer any automation to keep the secondary VBR server aware of the ever-changing contents of the repositories that contain backup copies from the primary site?

NetBackup has AIR (Automatic Image Replication) and Data Protector has ARS (Automatic Replication Synchronization) to keep a DR backup server synchronized. Surely Veeam has something similar either within VBR or Enterprise Manager.

[foggy]

What is the primary reason for having two Veeam B&R instances in your case? Do you use backup copy jobs to copy backups to the secondary site? Generally, second Veeam B&R instance is not aware of the backups created by the first one. But if they are placed into the same folder where the repository of the second server is looking at, they will be picked up by automatic rescan operations. This though may not be recommended depending on the activity of the second Veeam B&R instance (especially in case the repository is backed up by StoreOnce).

[skrause]

For making life easier (if you need to recover or whatnot), orchestrating all of your backup and backup copy jobs across all locations from the same B&R server. It is usually best to have the B&R server run in the secondary location. If you point your configuration backups to the repository on the opposite location, then in a worst case scenario where you lose access to your secondary datacenter you can quickly install VBR on a new server in the primary datacenter and import your configuration database and be able to run things like normal.

[Vejete]

What is the primary reason for having two Veeam B&R instances in your case? Do you use backup copy jobs to copy backups to the secondary site? Generally, second Veeam B&R instance is not aware of the backups created by the first one. But if they are placed into the same folder where the repository of the second server is looking at, they will be picked up by automatic rescan operations. This though may not be recommended depending on the activity of the second Veeam B&R instance (especially in case the repository is backed up by StoreOnce).

Foggy, that is exactly the scenario. Customer has a DR site with a 2nd VBR server. They want to run backup copies from their prod VBR server to a DR StoreOnce appliance then be able to run restores from the DR VBR server at any time. Micro Focus Data Protector is tooled to keep a DR server perpetually updated on the contents of replica (copy) stores produced from a prod site. I'm saddened to find that Veeam has no such mechanism.

[foggy]

If it were a single backup server doing both backups and backup copies, there wouldn't be any issues. As an alternative, backups can be quickly imported into the second instance upon DR (so perpetual sync is not required).