A small business concept

[markusu]

Have some question about the possibilitys with Veeam backup of a ESXi server.

The idea is to only have one physical server.

HP Proliant DL380; 2xPSU, 6HD@Raid5+Hotspare, 2xCPU Xeon QuadCore, 12GB RAM
-OS; ESXi server
-VM1; Windows Small Business Server 2008
-VM2; Windows Server 2008 Standard

Backup media: NAS on another location.

Questions..
1. If Veeam backup is installed and runned on VM2. Can it do backup of the server it is installed on?
2. If not, is it supported to run a third VM with a Linux dist.. that runs the Veeam backup of the other Windows VMs?
3. Does anyone see any problem of backing up a SBS 2008 server with Veeam backup? (Basically Windows Server 2008 with Exchange 2007, Sharepoint 3.0)

Regards,
Markus

[Gostev]

Markus,

1. No, Veeam Backup cannot backup itself. But you can consider using SQL server installing on another computer. SQL server is what you really want to backup since it is holding all the job configuration data. Reinstalling Backup takes less than a minute when using remote SQL, so it does not really make sense to backup it.

2. No, you can only install Veeam Backup in Windows computer.

3. No problems, we had this question before and we tested this. It actually has AD domain controller as well.

[markusu]

Markus,

1. No, Veeam Backup cannot backup itself. But you can consider using SQL server installing on another computer. SQL server is what you really want to backup since it is holding all the job configuration data. Reinstalling Backup takes less than a minute when using remote SQL, so it does not really make sense to backup it.

2. No, you can only install Veeam Backup in Windows computer.

3. No problems, we had this question before and we tested this. It actually has AD domain controller as well.

Thank your for your response!

I will place the Veeam SQL instance on VM2 and problaby use a domain-joined computer with Windows XP or Vista as backup destination. HD setup will be RAID1. The computer will also run the Veeam backup program.

Does this setup seem acceptable?

Regards,
Markus

[Gostev]

Yes, this is good solution. This way SQL can be shared between multiple apps (how about Veeam Monitor Free Edition?)

Please remember that you can backup to Linux server, and it actually makes most perfect backup destination, because Veeam Backup will automatically use remote Linux agent in this case. Linux VM can be made extremely light-weight, minimal install of your favorite distro with just 64-128M RAM, and you won't have to spend any Windows licenses or bother with Windows security.