Esxi backup and replication options

[bloodhound]

Hi everyone,

I am not very experienced on ESXI, used KVM/Hyper-V most of the time, but we have the following setup and some guidance would help a lot

2 x Esxi licensed servers (no vCenter).
Each server has 2 datastores:
1 x 8 TB for live machines
1 x 8 TB for backup storage

We do not have any shared storage, it is a segregated network so no cloud option either.

On each esxi server we have a couple of machines mix of linux/windows, nothing critical

The question is:
How we could implement Veeam in order for images from server 1 live storage to be backed or vm's replicated on server 2 backup storage and vice versa?

Please let me know if it is possible to achieve this directly in VMware (works well for small clients in Hyper-V) or if there is a way to present the physical datastore to Veeam

Thank you

[oleg.feoktistov]

Hi Radu and Welcome to the Community Forums,

Just a quick question. If no shared storage, are those esxi hosts interconnected by any other means?
It affects how backup proxy is going to interact with VMs to process and target storages.

Thanks,
Oleg

[bloodhound]

Hi Oleg

Those are two independant esxi hosts in the same subnet.

They are not connected at this point in any way.

Each server runs some applications, but i want a way to cross backup the images. In case server 1 drops, server two will have a backup of the images and i can restore them there.

Hope it makes sense

[PetrM]

Hi Radu,

What about this topology? Does that work for you?

Thanks!

[bloodhound]

Hi PetrM

That is a very complex solution for something really basic that i would need.

I just need a simple solution to backup on local storage from server 2 all the images from server1.

This is a 5 minutes config on hyper-v.

[PetrM]

Hi Radu,

If you're not seeking for some special config, maybe just setup a VM with repository role on each host: backups of ESXi 1 workloads are pointed to a repository on ESXi 2 and vice versa?

Thanks!

[obwielnls]

I do this all the time. Just setup replication from host A to B and another replication job from Host B to A .. ?

[PetrM]

Yes, replication is a valid option as well.

In this case I would setup 2 VBR server instances to orchestrate replications on each site because the recommended approach is to deploy VBR on DR site:
A -> B replication - VBR server on B;
B -> A replication - VBR server on A;

Thanks!

[bloodhound]

Hi everyone

Thank you for all your replies
Sorry for not coming back earlier, but the project took a really long time to be approved so I only received the licenses now...

So far I have:

Veeam server as a VM on Server A
On Server A, i've added as a physical disk to a windows VM with Refs 64K the 2nd Lun which will be used for backup
On Server B, i've added as a physical disk to a windows VM with Refs 64K the 2nd Lun which will be used for backup

What option would be best?
A. Cross site backup
Backup all images from Server A to the Lun on Server B
Backup all images from Server B to the Lun on Server A


B. Local backup with remote copy
Backup all images from Server A to the local disk on server A and configure a Backup copy job to make a copy on server B as well?
Backup all images from Server B to the local disk on server B and configure a Backup copy job to make a copy on server A as well?
Like this I would have for each machine two copies.
In case of a VM crash i can recover it locally
In case of a physical crash i can recover it on the other network

Regarding the Veeam machine itself, should i create a replication job from Server A to Server B?
In case Server A goes physically down, can i power on the Veeam replica on Server B manually?

Please advise

Thank you

[PetrM]

Hello,

I'd suggest to leverage the functionality of backup copy to stay within the 3-2-1 rule.

It's up to you to decide either you need to run replication jobs or not but I don't recommend to power on replicas manually but to perform failover instead.
In order to perform failover in case of server A failure, you can restore configuration on a VM on the server B or spin up an additional VBR instance on the server B to manage A -> B replications.

Thanks!