Help in understanding workers

[b.vanhaastrecht]

Hi,

If possible I could use some elaboration regarding the workers of VBA.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbazu ... tml?ver=30

I have some questions about them:
- Are they mandatory?
- The guide says that it could optimize infrastructure costs, how can this be accomplished and to what is this compared to?
- It could also give better performance, how and again compared to what?
- How should we position them, at what level should we deploy them? Per vNet to avoid peering traffic costs?

Regards,
Bastiaan

[nielsengelen]

1. Workers are used to transform snapshots into blob storage so they are required. Unless you configure a snapshot only job in which we don’t require workers.

2 and 3. By keeping persistent workers (which u can configure up to a maximum of 5), u can save costs compared to a fresh deployment.

To optimize infrastructure costs and ensure better performance of the backup and restore processes, you can manage the number of worker instances deployed by Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure by adding custom worker configurations.

4. Workers are configured per region and network settings are configured in the wizard. All info is available in the user guide marked as Important. Per vNet is indeed advised to same on some costs.

[b.vanhaastrecht]

Hi Niels, hope you are doing fine.

1. Sure? The reason I asked because I got a upgraded v1 deployment where I'm sure the workers were mandatory. Just deployed a fresh v3 at a customer and it's currently processing snapshots and backup to blob without a worker... So has this changed with v3?
2-3 Still don't get it, I understand less workers is less costs but how does a worker itself save me money? Which costs are specifically void when using a worker.
4 So per region one worker is the way to go?

The user guide just lacks guidelines in how/when to use workers.

[nielsengelen]

1. Snapshots don’t require a worker. For backup, we use a worker to convert it to our Veeam Backup format. Could be that u have a configured worker in standby that is being used all the time.

2. Network connectivity and in general storing backups in blob is cheaper compared to keeping snapshots. This all combined saves costs on the long term.

After the backup or restore process completes, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure keeps running the minimum number of worker instances, and the rest are removed from the backup infrastructure. To reduce the cost, set the minimum number of worker instances to 0.

4. One worker can process 1 virtual machine, deploying multiple will speed up the whole backup process based upon the amount of virtual machines in a region.

[b.vanhaastrecht]

1. I'd not configured the worker part it was empty prior to run the policy. Now that the policy is running with backup it has created a worker configuration in VBA. Case closed.
2-3 Ok, so we need workers, the amount of workers determines thru put and has impact on costs. Got it.
4 Ok got that to.

Now it's time to experiment and create our own way-of-work(ers) . Thanks!