Backup of large file share on Windows Server - Licensing problem

[CarloO]

Hello. I have to backup a large file share ( about 3 TB) with Veeam B&R v.10 on a physical Windows Server machine. As far as I know I can use 3 different ways

1 - Windows Agent Backup - Volume Level Backup
2 - Windows Agent Backup - File Level Backup
3 - File Backup (registering the server in File Share -> File Server list)

Using option 1 needs 1 license but is very slow (about 24 hours) and inefficient, as in the same disk there many other data I don't need to backup
Using option 2 needs 1 license but is even slower (> than 24 hours)
Using option 3 is much much faster (about 6 hours). But looking in the license panel (I'm using trial version to find how many license I need to buy) I've seen that this job uses 12 (1 license every 250GB)!!!
In other words in this case Windows server is considered as a NAS and license assigned according to this.
Is this correct ? Using option 1 or 2 I need only 1 license, using option 3 I need 12 licenses ???
And, also, why this speed difference between the different techniques (option 2 is even slower than 1, but the reason is known).
I find this behavior annoying and confusing.
I'm doing something wrong ?

Thanks

Carlo

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Carlo,

Your license calculations are correct.

Speed of backup depends on various factors and your 36MB\s processing speed for volume level looks quite slow to me and might be worth investigating for bottlenecks. Also note that first full backup will be taken, then changed block tracking will kick in, and only changed volume blocks will get protected, reducing both backed up data as well as backup time. Also note that you can backup particular volume instead of whole system, localizing protected data from unwanted.

Difference in speed between technologies is expected. Agent backup and NAS backup are built on totally different approaches for totally different cases: agent requires OS to sit on and able to do local calls on protected system, whereas NAS Backup was built, uh well, for NAS devices, where it is impossible to have a persistent agent sitting on top of NAS box and we have to communicate remotely to retrieve data.

Two technologies also vary on feature set and used for different scenarios: Veeam Agent is able to restore corrupted OS and volumes, whereas NAS Backup is capable of only file-level restores but with much deeper integration on it(like file versioning and archival)

To sum up: you are doing everything right when protecting Windows box with Veeam Agent for Windows. Yes, there is an alternative method that gives different set of features, might be faster (when file level backup mode is compared) and have different licensing scheme. Use whatever suits your needs the best - feature wise and price wise.

/Thanks!