Can i do this with Veeam and Vsphere ?

[craigcurtin]

Hi Guys,

Just evaluating Veeam on ESXI with Vsphere (6.7) - have been a longtime user of Trilead VM Explorer for a number of client.

Our clients are usually SMB - max VMs and 100 employees.

We have implemented a basic offsite storage system for them with portable USB hard drives.

Our system under Trilead worked as follows

1) Backup to SMB/CIFS storage on linux - confirmed i can do the same on Veeam so all good
2) Have each VM backup to their own directory for a full backup on the weekend and then incremental backups each evening during the week - Trilead conveniently stores the incremental backups under the weekly backups folder for each VM that is backed up
3) So if i have VM named - Mailcleaner-2021 - it will create a directory on the SMB store as Mailcleaner-2021 - underneath this directory it will have (e.g. 07032021, 28022021, 21022021 etc) - each of these representing the date of the full backup - under each of those directories will then be daily incremental backups.
4) We have a number of scripts that are then written to take the latest master directory (e.g 07032021) under each Virtual machine directory and copy it to a USB drive that is then taken off-site at the end of the day (we have a sequence of these for Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly rotations etc)
5) To restore a VM at any point in time (if it has not been purged off the primary storage) it is a simple matter for us to attach the correct USB, copy it back to the SMB share and restore from there
6) Trilead handles the onsite rotation keeping 3 months worth of backups and then deleting them out as they expire.

As we have only just started evaluating Veeam it is difficult to see if we can massage it to do something similar (or if their is a better way)

Remember these are fairly basic clients with no onsite technical expertise and they have made a reasonable investment in the current infrastructure with portable drives and the like.

We are in Australia so Internet access if still fairly costly and patchy - so a number of the clients do not have anything more than 25/5 Mbs internet access so offsite backup to the cloud is not really an option - particularly in the case of needing a fast restore.

Can we setup Trilead in a similar manner or manipulate it in such a way to end up with the same result ?

I have setup a couple of test jobs and from what i can see it creates an initial file per VM with a date and time in the name and a VBK extension, it then appears to apply incremental changes in similarly structure VIB files - am i reading this correctly ?

If so do the VIB files get rolled into the VBK file at some point or are they just superseded by the next VBK file (based on my job definitions of when i want new full backups etc ?

I tried asking these questions through the Sales person who sent me an email shortly after my trial started (the first time) and heard nothing back despite 3 follow ups) so i thought it worth trying here

thanks in advance

Craig

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

1) SMB / CIFS and Linux are different from a Veeam perspective (Linux host preferred).
2) all files are in one folder. But you can easily find them (if you need that for whatever reason)
3 / 4) I don't know whether you really need that scripts with Veeam. Rotated drives might be the solution: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110
5) don't know what you mean, but Veeam has a restore button for classic VM and instant VM restore

I recommend starting with the quick start guide: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

Things are probably different. But it should be possible to meet your need. Veeam is not a copy of "insert product name here"

it then appears to apply incremental changes in similarly structure VIB files - am i reading this correctly ?

yep

If so do the VIB files get rolled into the VBK file at some point or are they just superseded by the next VBK file

it depends on the backup mode. as you talk about very small customers, I recommend to go with forward incremental with active full (https://www.veeam.com/kb1932 animation)

Best regards,
Hannes

[craigcurtin]

Thanks for the response Hannes.

I have spent a lot more time on this overnight and think i can get closer to emulating our old environment whilst we transition to a smarter way to do things

1) If i establish a separate backup job for each Virtual Machine and name the Backup job as per the name of the Virtual machine - it appears that the files for that Virtual Machine backup all get kept in the same directory - so this is a good start for us - are there any downsides (on a small site) to having multiple backup jobs - it appears that they do not run concurrently - is the only issue i can see so far - it also appears that we do not get Dedup across jobs - but not sure on that

2) I looked at the docs and then played with the Rotated drives - and will continue to do so - but the first thing i found was that you could not get each virtual machine in their own file - it was either or - not sure how rotated drives will work with seperate backup jobs - will play around with that later today and see what happens

3) Yes the Active full on a weekend with daily incrementals and a 28 day retention time seems to achieve what i want

4) If i lose a backup repository what is the process to reimport a set of backup files into Veeam for restoration ?

I am still working my way through the docs but so far looks pretty good

regards

Craig

[HannesK]

Hello,

1) the downside is, that it is annoying (at least for me) to configure and only scales for a few machines. Probably not a problem for you... I would not do it... just imagine you want to re-configure a setting... then you need to to through all jobs again (or PowerShell).

4) double-click on the file or import wizard https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110 should do the job

Best regards,
Hannes

[craigcurtin]

Thanks once again Hannes - i have tested the copy jobs and can not really see a way to make them work for offsite storage of disks etc - still playing though.

As we only have a max of about 5 VMs on most of the sites we are backing up - the individual backup jobs seem to work the best and give us control.

We will let run the current setup and see if we can script what we want to achieve

Thanks for all the answers.

Craig

[HannesK]

well, for 5 VMs you can also create one backup job per USB disk... that might be easier then trying to work with backup copy jobs.