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foggy
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Re: Changing Replication Source

Post by foggy »

Then I'm merging this thread into another one discussing similar scenarios.
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[MERGED] Replication from Backup copy data

Post by Svalbard2018 »

Hello.
I already read a few threads about similar problem but I cannot manage to solve my issues.
We have 2 sites: site A (main site) and site B (DR).
A Veeam B&R server has been deployed both at site A and B.

We do have local VM Backups at main site A.
Then we do Backup Copy to a remote repository at site B (DR).
Finally we do replicate VM at the remote site B using remote site B repository as source.
The replication job is handled by Veeam B&R at site A.

This last step does not seems very efficient. All data will be moved at site B being orchestrated from site A.
This way the replication job requires nearly the same time as the backup copy which seems a bit odd because data has already been trasferred on the slow WAN link.
Thus we would like to handle this using Veeam B&R server at site B.
So we defined a replication job at site B to replicate a VM from site A to site B using as source the site B repository.

The result is always "No restore points found".

In the log, the only interesting line is:
"Physical host volume was not found for path ... on host ..."

We did rescan the repository and of course the data is there with all restore points.
I can even instant recovery the VMs. But this seems invisible to local jobs.

So I am wondering:
- Is the replication job at site B able to access backup copy data, in its own repository, coming form site A jobs ?
- Do I need a a dummy backup job and to script something (I guess I need some pointer to further documentation in this case) ?
- What am I doing wrong ?

Thank you,
regards,
Alberto
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam serv

Post by PTide »

Alberto,

Please review this thread for a workaround and detailed explanation. Also I suggest you to pay special attention to this post.

Thanks
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam serv

Post by nunciate »

We recently upgraded our production backup storage so I took the opportunity to make some changes in our basic design. Before I had a Physical backup server in each location and each contained backup jobs for each location. One in Prod and one in DR. I also had a VM in prod that acted as a replication server. My goal was to combine everything into 1 VM with all jobs.

Here is what I ended up with and this works great for me. I am very happy with the performance of all of my jobs now.
I have an HP Apollo Storage Server in Prod. I have a DL380 Server with lots of external disk array storage in DR. Both are FC attached back to their respective SANs to pull backups over fiber.
I have a single VM in Prod that acts as my Enterprise Manager. It is replicated to DR.
I have a single VM in DR that acts as my job server. It uses the 2 physical servers as proxies. It has all of my repositories setup, all the backup, replication and backup copy jobs setup. I replicate this VM back to prod just in case.

First I created a new VM in DR which will be my jobs server. I chose DR since that is where we would be doing things in the event of a disaster so it cuts a step of failing over my backup VM in that case.
I restored the DB from my original Prod server to that new VM since the vast majority of my jobs were in my old server.
I then recreated all of my replication jobs on that new server. I chained the replication jobs to run after the backup jobs complete and I set the replication sources as the production backup repositories. That cuts down on snapshots on prod VMs. I then chain a second backup job off the replication job which does a backup of the replica in DR. Yea that is overkill but it is required by our owner so that is what we do. Then my tape jobs are set to run after backups complete each night. It works great.

In my original configuration I had backup jobs in DR running on the physical server in DR so I have to re-catalog all of those tapes back into the new primary VM so that they are all in a central location. I am actually still working on that but for now the software is still installed on that old server so if I need to find tapes in DR I can always reference that old setup there.
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[MERGED] Backup, Backup Copy with VBR at Production, REP at DR

Post by perseusco »

Hi,
I have a VBR server at my Production site that runs Backup, Backup Copy and Replication Jobs, this last job (REP) replicates to an offsite location, at this location i have a VBR Server i recently setup where i would like to run my REP jobs only and remove these from Production VBR server, is this possible? i reached out to support and i was told that in order to accomplish this i would have to run all jobs on my offsite location.

VBR 9.5.4.2399
VMWare 6.7

thanks
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Re: Backup, Backup Copy with VBR at Production, REP at DR

Post by foggy »

Hi Perseus, unless you're replicating from backups, you can have different backup servers responsible for backup and replication jobs. Could you please share the case ID so we could review the support engineer's answer? Thanks!
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Re: Backup, Backup Copy with VBR at Production, REP at DR

Post by perseusco »

Hi foggy,
We do replicate from backups, what would be the challenge? case number is 03362185.
foggy
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by foggy »

The second backup server will not be aware of backups created by the first one. You would need to rescan the source repository prior replication runs. I've merged your post to existing thread discussing similar scenarios, please review for more details.
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by taston »

Hey,
I've read a number of forum posts on this topic, so thankfully I'm not the only in this boat. Like others, we have VBR servers (and Proxy/Repo servers) at both Prod and DR sites. Although its called DR, there are live VM's running there, so there is a need to protect those VMs with Backup locally, and Replication back to Prod site. As with everyone else, in the event of a site failure, we want to be able to use the VBR console at the remote site to immediately failover to the Replica VMs - rather than waste time restoring Veeam Configuration to new 'vanilla' VBR servers etc. I have to write the failover procedures, so it needs to be as simple a task as possible!

In this example (my predicament), I am taking about protecting Prod site VMs, though in reality I need to set it up for both sites as they both host production VMs: The preferred setup would be to create Backup jobs protecting the Prod VMs using the Prod VBR server and Repo's, with a BackupCopy job then sending the backup data to the DR site Repo (yes there is a Proxy server in DR aswell). Then on the DR site VBR server, a Replication Job is created for Prod VMs using the BackupCopy data as a source - as this data is local to the DR site - we are not sending data across the WAN again. As everyone is eluding to, this Replication job fails with "restore point is located in backup file that is not mapped to any backup job".

I have:
- 1x Repo in Prod for Prod VMs (Local Backup target)
- 1x Repo in Prod for DR VMs (Backup Copy target)
- 1x Repo in DR for DR VMs (Local Backup target)
- 1x Repo in DR for Prod VMs (Backup Copy target)
4 Repo's in total - that are referenced on both Prod and DR VBR servers. I have created a Powershell script that runs in the Replication job (pre script) that rescans all of the repositories (Get-VBRBackupRepository | Rescan-VBREntity -Wait). The error still exists.

Helpful people on this forum are talking about setting up a dummy Backup job to reference the original Backup job - can someone clarify what I should be including in this job please, and how it maps to the original job? What happens if the original backup job changes - are these changes reflected in the dummy job, or is there more manual intervention required?

I appreciate that this is not a supported config, and at present I have to run backup jobs from the remote site VBR server in order to be able to create replication jobs using BackupCopy data as the source (as the original backup job IS known to that VBR server). Whilst this works, its not ideal because if the WAN link fails, no backups will run at all - which compromises the whole solution.

I know several Veeam techies read these posts and provide excellent support. Can they advise if there is a roadmap for Veeam to provide a supported solution to this issue? In my opinion, it is a fundamental flaw. Surely your DR/remote VBR Server should be ready to use immediately in order to failover VMs controlled by the Veeam console? (yes I know this would be true if we were using the original VM as the source for replication, but we can't afford to have the original VM snapshotted for the duration of a Replication job taking place across the WAN with potentially GBs of changed data).

Thanks in advance
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by nunciate »

What I do is backup all production VMs to my repository server in Prod. My main job server resides in DR but controls the backups in Prod.
Then I replicate all production VMs to DR but I use the prod repository as the data source for replications (not the VMware environment itself). This is located on the Virtual Machine section of a replication job by clicking the Source button.

Then I backup those replications in DR to a DR repository. Unfortunately our owner requires a full backup of all data in both prod and DR with tape out in both location. So we keep 2 tape copies of all of our data in 2 cities. Is overkill but that was the mandate from up top so we do it. In this fashion you are only hitting your production VMware environment once to backup and then you are only transferring the data across the wire once per night.

I also have many live VMs in our DR environment so I do the reverse with those. I back them up in DR, replicate them to Prod using the backup as the source, then backup the replica in prod.

That is really the simplest way to do this but assumes you have infrastructure to support that many replicas in your DR site. Lucky for us our DR site is a sister site and has the same capacity as production form a host and storage standpoint.
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by foggy »

taston wrote: Feb 15, 2019 12:41 amHelpful people on this forum are talking about setting up a dummy Backup job to reference the original Backup job - can someone clarify what I should be including in this job please, and how it maps to the original job? What happens if the original backup job changes - are these changes reflected in the dummy job, or is there more manual intervention required?
Dummy job is a regular backup job without a schedule, that has the same VMs added to it as the corresponding job created on the first Veeam B&R instance (production, in your case) and mapped to the backup files created by that job. This will allow to use these files as source for the jobs on the second Veeam B&R instance, provided the repository is periodically rescanned to reflect recent changes.
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by benthomas »

Are there any roadmap items for Veeam to support multiple B&R servers that are actually aware of each other?
For me this is a massive missing piece these days for both smaller and larger deployments.
It's not uncommon to run 1 B&R server in DR for replication and 1 B&R server in Production for Backups.
Ben Thomas | Solutions Advisor | Veeam Vanguard 2023 | VMCE2022 | Microsoft MVP 2018-2023 | BCThomas.com
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by nunciate »

Running a single server to act as your central backup controller is much easier. 1 VM, located in your DR facility which controls proxies in each other datacenter. That way all jobs are centralized on the main server and you don't have to worry about issues where 1 job doesn't know what the other is doing. I used to have a separated environment like you mentioned and since combining everything I have found my systems much easier to manage.
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by benthomas »

Yes it's easier.
My current environment involves 2 active sites, with a b&r server at each site, because they cross replicate to each other. And if 1 site fails, I need to failover the VMs to the remaining active site. So having only 1 b&r server would mean if that site fails, I'd have to power on the VMs outside of veeam in the remaining site.

Like vCenter supporting linked mode, or products like Netbackup supporting federation, it would be nice for veeam to have a means of connecting b&r servers together.
Ben Thomas | Solutions Advisor | Veeam Vanguard 2023 | VMCE2022 | Microsoft MVP 2018-2023 | BCThomas.com
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by nunciate »

Yea it would be cool if they added say a HA or Clustered type environment so you could have 2 VM's that basically share the same DB.
I replicate my DR Veeam primary VM back to prod each night along with all my live VM in my DR facility. That way if we did have an outage in DR all I would have to do is manually power up that 1 VM and then I could control everything from prod. But yea I get ya. HA would be nice.
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by taston »

Thanks Foggy for the prompt reply. I have tried this briefly without success, but I'll put some more time into it soon and report back.
It's reassuring to see more people on this post with a similar predicament. My current process works, but would cause me an issue if the link between sites failed as backups would fail - I would usually run backup jobs from the local VBR server.
@nunciate - my other option is to do what you are doing - in the event of a DR scenario, power on the replicated VBR server outside of Veeam and live with any split brain scenarios for just that server, with other failovers managed by the VBR server. I can't help feeling that a correct and supported solution to this wouldn't be too difficult to build into a future release?
@Veeam - is there a way to feed this back constructively to the R&D dept?
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by foggy » 1 person likes this post

Thanks for the feedback, Tony. You may be sure that your message has reached R&D since this forum is operated by Veeam product management department.
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[MERGED] 03591498 Remote replica from backup job failing

Post by spoovy »

Brief outline of setup:
2 Veeam B&R servers, one in Prod site, one in DR site.
Veeam1 backs up prod VMs in prod site.
Veeam2 needs to create replicas in DR site, based on backups from Veeam1.

So, I am finding a problem with the replica job. I have followed https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... l?ver=95u4
Particularly:

--------------------------
a) Import the backup to the Veeam Backup & Replication console.
b) Create a new backup job and map the imported backup to it.
c) Create a replication job, enable the Get seed from the following backup repository option and point to the backup repository where the imported backup resides.
--------------------------

I have added Veeam1 as a backup repository (type: Windows server) on Veeam2, and imported the backup jobs. I have created a new backup job on Veeam2, and mapped it to the imported job. I have created a replication job as well. The replication job succeeds; the problem is with the backup job on Veeam2; I find that it fails with:

-------------------------
30/05/2019 01:01:36 :: Error: Cannot proceed with the job: existing backup meta file 'Main-LD9_no_vmtools.vbm' on repository 'LD9-Backups' is not synchronized with the DB. To resolve this, run repository rescan
--------------------------

If I rescan, the job will succeed, but then the original job that it is mapped to (on Veeam1) will fail with the same error. If I rescan the job on Veeam1, the job on Veeam2 will fail again; as if the two jobs are conflicting. Is this a bug, bad documentation, or am I doing it wrong?
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by foggy »

Hi Chris, I believe documentation should be more precise here. You cannot run both jobs in parallel since they are effectively pointing to the same backup chain. Instead of running the backup job on the second Veeam B&R instance, you need to periodically rescan the repository on it to actualize restore points (see thread above).
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by wreedps »

How do you import the backup job from the Prod Veeam Server or setup the dummy job to populate the objects? That is the part i am missing. I have the Prod repo setup in DR.
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by foggy »

Hi Will, you need to create a repository on the second Veeam B&R instance pointing to the same folder where the backups created by the prod instance are stored. After repository rescan they will be imported in Veeam B&R and you will be able to map the job to them.
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam serv

Post by jim3cantos »

alanbolte wrote: Mar 29, 2016 6:54 am In v9 there is no longer any significant upside to running two separate backup servers to separate backup jobs from replication jobs. It makes much more sense to put your single backup server at the DR site, and use a remote console at the production site for management and file- or application-level restores. If you have Enterprise or Enterprise Plus edition, you have the added bonus being able to designate a guest interaction proxy at the production site.
We are looking to implement encryption in our current configuration (9.5U4b Enterprise). We are using the dummy job workaround and we want to have backups encrypted and the posibility to run Datalabs at DR site too. It seems that the only "viable" option is to "move" the backup server to DR site and "consolidate" with the one already there. So now, looking for "gotchas" before implementing this approach. For example: Another question is about the easiest way to migrate the VRB server to DR site? I'm thinking about doing a planned failover of the VM to DR site using current VRB server there. Any gotchas?
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Re: How do I replicate from backup files with 2nd Veeam server?

Post by foggy » 1 person likes this post

Hi Jose, VESQL restores includes the same process as FLR, so you will be ok. As for the easiest way to migrate, then it is configuration export/import functionality. Keep in mind though that you will not be able to merge configurations and some manual work will be required to migrate jobs between instances.
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