Multiple VBR - Server with VMWare Cluster

[fklein]

Hi there,

we recently started managing a customer who has a hosted VMWare-cluster (3hosts with SAN). The "Hosting"-Company already backups up the cluster with their own VBR (30 days retention just for their disaster recovery).
We like to establish our own "customer owned/serviceprovider managed" - VBR and do our own backups with the retention our customer needs.

What we don't know, is it possible to have two VBR-Sewrver (that don't know of each other) backing up own VMWare-Cluster and what possible problems can come up?

Regards,
Florian

[Mildur]

Hi Florian,

From a technical standpoint, it will work as long as you don’t run backup jobs from the same virtual machine at the same time.

Keep in mind that you must use your own rental license to protect your customers VMs, regardless of what the hosting company does. Since different service providers are involved and the backup infrastructures are dedicated, license sharing between the hosting company and you won’t be possible.

Best,
Fabian

[fklein]

Hi Fabian,

the customer will get a dedicated VBR which is managed by us and receives the rental license via Veeam Cloud Connect / VeeamServiceProviderConsole.
They know it will cost extra.

To summarize:
- if we don't overlap in the creation of snapshots it works?
- it's not a common configuration and not official supported by Veeam?

Regards,
Florian

[chris.childerhose]

Hey Florian,

To summarize:
- if we don't overlap in the creation of snapshots it works? -- Yes, it will be coordinated with the other provider and their jobs you need to take into account.
- it's not a common configuration and not official supported by Veeam? -- Not sure if uncommon or not, first I am hearing of this request, but it should be supported by Veeam when using separate licenses.

It will be the coordination that will take some effort for scheduling,

Regards,
Chris

[Mildur]

Hi Florian

- it's not a common configuration and not official supported by Veeam?

It’s supported—as long as you don’t run the backups or replication jobs at the same time.

The challenge with parallel backups is VSS and VMware snapshots. If they’re initiated at the same time for a VM, it will lead to backup session failures.

Best,
Fabian

[tj818]

Scheduling will be the challenging part. I was thinking one thing that can be done is maybe add a Pre Script that checks to see if a snapshot with the name "VEEAM BACKUP TEMPORARY SNAPSHOT" exists for the VM(s) in the Backup Job via PowerCLI and if it detects it, the backup does not run.

[chris.childerhose]

That could be a workaround for the scheduling, for sure. I would suggest testing it to see the outcome and tweaking as necessary.

[fklein]

Thanks to everyone.

Your answers are very helpful and we will start to evalute the setup, considering all your input.

[chris.childerhose]

You are welcome. Let us know where you get and what works, as it may help others.

[aneo_cbu]

what about CBT, won't this interfere with two backup schedules from different VBRs ?

I was thinking of this situation:

* Maschine get's backuped by Veeam A
* VMware gives him information about the changes Blocks.
* Veeam gets the info, it does the backup of the blocks.
* CBT gets a reset.

* Now Veeam B comes by, asks VMware about CBT.
* now the Blocks are not all since the last backup of Veeam B, cause Veeam A got all the changed blocks.
* Veeam B only got a subset of blocks and the backup is not consitent anymore.

am i wrong ?

[Origin 2000]

@fklein

not common practice.

Apart of the scheduling
- Reset of CBT.
- Version trouble when different Veeam Versions will inject software into the VM
- Are GuestApplication Aware backup also part of the game?

Regards,
Joerg

[chris.childerhose]

Ah yes I forgot about CBT and versions. Come to think of it doing this may not be the ideal scenario.

[gcg]

Since Veeam can take system volumes and rehydrate them as full VMs, what about installing a Veeam Agent in the guests and you back them up using that as a full system image? You get all the browsing, instant recovery, etc., benefits of a VM-based backup but you just have an agent. You then don't need to worry about CBT at the VM level because you're not talking with it. You'll have VSS snapshots that can provide the CBT from within the guest for your backups.

I might be missing something here, as I've never tried to do this deliberately, but I HAVE inadvertently backed up large servers as both VMs and agents when I was having problems with one over the other. There might have been a time, not that I'm saying there WAS, that I left both active for an extended period because I forgot to turn the other off and didn't experience any backup or restore failures from either image.

[chris.childerhose]

Agent-based backups would definitely be another option with the CBT driver installed. Interesting suggestion.