Off-Host and Backup proxy roles on the same server?

[tomascomas]

I cannot find a definitive answer to weather Off-Host, Backup proxies and Backup server roles can be installed on the same physical server or not. Environment to be backed up is Hyper-V VMs hosted on Hyper-V cluster with CSVs on FC shared storage so we want to exploit the off-host backup feature to do VM image backup, however also do the agent on VM backups. We have one physical server with FC and 10Gb Eth adapters dedicated for the Veeam.

Is a single physical server for Veeam sufficient for off-host image and also agent based backups of Hyper-V VMs acceptable?

[Mildur]

Hi Tomas

Our recommendation is to use On-Host proxies. Off-host proxies bring much more complexity into the backup environment.

I cannot find a definitive answer to weather Off-Host, Backup proxies and Backup server roles can be installed on the same physical server or not.

Unfortunately, we don't support this scenario. We recommend using a virtual machine for the backup server. Although you can install VBR directly on the Hyper-V host, if you run into any technical issues, our support team will request you to migrate it to a virtual machine.

Backup proxies are only required for specific Agent use cases, NAS or object storage backup and vSphere backups. If you don't protect such workloads, you don't need to deploy an additional backup proxy.

also agent based backups of Hyper-V VMs acceptable?

While VM backup jobs are generally recommended for Hyper-V VMs, there are specific scenarios where using an agent is necessary. For instance, if you have externally mounted storage (e.g., iSCSI) directly in the VM, an agent is required to backup the entire VM including that volume.

Best,
Fabian

[tomascomas]

Thanks Fabian for a quick reply.

I take your advise on virtualising VBR server, however would still prefer to explore the off-host proxy option as we have FC available on hosts, storage and physical Veeam box and also there is VSS hardware provider from storage vendor available.
Any specific reasons why you would not recommend use of off-host proxy ?

Tomas

[Mildur]

Mainly because of the management overhead you will get. But if you are fine with it, then use off-host proxies. They are fully supported.

You can find a pro/con comparison between both modes on our best practice guide.
https://bp.veeam.com/vbr/2_Design_Struc ... -selection

Best,
Fabian

[johan.h]

As Fabian already highlighted, off-host proxies have to be maintained to the same OS patch level and configuration as the rest of the Hyper-V cluster, without being part of the same cluster.

These requirements can add a lot of management overhead over time. Hardware VSS providers aren't all created equal either. Architecturally VMware and Hyper-V are quite different, and we find that on-host proxies are typically enough for most use cases.