Offsite backup copy job

[Fisz]

Hello,
I'm wondering is it possible to have 2 Veeam instances, one sitting at main datacenter, doing backup jobs, and 2nd Veeam instance sitting in colocation, doing backup copy jobs only?
I don't want to do 2 independent backup jobs, for the same vSphere environment, because it'll "kill" the infrastructure.

[foggy]

Why do you need the second Veeam B&R for that? You can have a single instance performing both backup jobs locally and copy jobs offsite. With two instances, the second one wouldn't be aware of the backups produced by the first one, so you would need to use a workaround with dummy backup jobs mapped to the source backup files produced by the first instance and periodically rescan the repository on the second one - not a recommended type of setup.

[Fisz]

Yes, I know, that I can do this all-in-one.

I'm searching for a good "anti ransomware" solution for small-mid environment.
The main Veeam VM is domain connected, the 2nd Veeam would be off-domain, working in colocation, with their own datastore connected through iSCSI (Synology NAS). Just want to reduce the ransomware impact, and I don't want to connect both iSCSI datastores (main backup & backup copy job DS) to the same Veeam server.

[foggy]

Then you can add the off-domain server as a repository for the backup copy jobs, without installing a full Veeam B&R there.

[Fisz]

But still it will be one Veeam server, with 2 datastores connected to it. Am I right?

And how about backup proxy? Is it only for balancing the load comming from the jobs? Or can I deploy an linux based veeam proxy, then connect a new datastore via iSCSI to it - and store backup copy jobs there (without connecting the same datastore to Windows)?

[foggy]

But still it will be one Veeam server, with 2 datastores connected to it. Am I right?

You have a domain-joined backup server (with one iSCSI LUN connected for regular backups) doing all the jobs and a separate off-domain server (with another iSCSI LUN for backup copies) added to the backup server as a Windows repository.

And how about backup proxy? Is it only for balancing the load comming from the jobs? Or can I deploy an linux based veeam proxy, then connect a new datastore via iSCSI to it - and store backup copy jobs there (without connecting the same datastore to Windows)?

Yes, you can connect the repository LUN directly to the proxy server.

[Fisz]

This seems to be a great solution for us.
I have two more questions - how the main Veeam server communicate with the proxy datastore? Through some API? Because the proxy datastore is not directly accessable (visible) in the Veeam server.
And how about proxy server licensing? Does it consume some licence? How about if we put proxy server on 2nd vCenter (but still it will be doing copy jobs for the main vCenter)?

[foggy]

You need to add that server as a backup repository in Veeam B&R. You do not need any additional licenses for proxy/repository servers.