Backup server itself BMR

[fgudin]

Hello,

we’re trying to design a recovery plan for the following setup: one Veeam Backup & Recovery server (v12 if it matters), holding our backup repository on a dedicated local volume (about 25TB). It also has an LTO drive where tape jobs put a copy of most of it.
We assume the case of a data wipe: the server’s logically destroyed but its hardware is sane/reusable. All’s left are the LTO tapes.

My simple question for which I can’t seem to find a clear answer here: how to build a recovery medium (bootable, of course) that would provide the required pieces to restore the backup server itself from tapes only ?

Thanks in advance.

[Mildur]

Hi

Recovering the backup server itself from tape is difficult. Because you need a backup server to recover data from tape.
A recovery media to restore from tape doesn't exist.

The simplest way is to redeploy your VBR server and import your configuration backup. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

With a configuration backup, you can deploy a new backup server and import the previous configuration. All Jobs, Restore Point metadata and other settings will be imported to the new server. Then you can start with recovering your production workload from Tape.
Please also see the blog article from Hannes:
https://www.veeam.com/blog/restoring-in ... veeam.html

Best,
Fabian

[fgudin]

Hi,

Thank you Fabian for your detailed answer and pointers.
Before taking a turn, one option someone referred me to was to install a Veeam agent onto the B&R server itself and use its recovery media creation tool. Fearing a great deal of bad karma with that kludge: should i try this ?

[Mildur]

You're welcome. Yes, you can also use our Veeam Agent to take a backup of the Veeam server.
Please consider the following:
- Don't use Tapes as a backup target --> you need a B&R server to restore your B&R server
- Don't use the internal disks as a backup target --> if the volumes are destroyed, you don't have a backup of the B&R server
- Make sure to exclude volumes with the backup data of your production vms.

Best,
Fabian