Replicating VMs to Another Site

[vipes27]

We're a single location office and we've been discussing the idea of renting rack space from a data center, putting our duplicate hardware in there and replicating to the data center. Currently, we have 2 hosts and 2 SANs onsite. The SANs replicate to each other but I'd like to split them up. It would also be nice, in the event of a disaster, that we could run off of the data center. What is the best way to replicate our VMs to a data center so that if something happened to our location, either a hardware issue or disaster, we could run off of the data center? I've read a little about Veeam Backup Free Edition and it seems that we could backup the VMs and restore them if we lost our hardware. Any suggestions on which way we should look?

Thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi,

You need to use replication jobs, please take a look at our sticky F.A.Q. which should answer all basic questions:
>>> READ FIRST : [FAQ] FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS <<<

I've read a little about Veeam Backup Free Edition and it seems that we could backup the VMs and restore them if we lost our hardware.

Veeam Backup Free allows ad-hoc backups only. If you want to run replication/backup jobs automatically, you should be using full version of Veeam B&R.

Thanks!

[vipes27]

Thanks, I'll take a look at the FAQ.

Comparing the Free vs. Full version, I saw that you couldn't schedule backups with the free version. However, doing an ad-hoc backup using the free version would still allow me to restore on the existing or a new host, correct?

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, absolutely.

[vipes27]

With the free version, can you do these backups to a flash drive/external hard drive or does it have to go to the SAN. If you can't choose that in the free version, is that an option in the full version?

What is the typical size ration of the backup. For example, If I have a VM that has 150GB of storage provisioned but I'm only using 30GB of that storage, is there an easy way to estimate what the size of the backup will be?

Thanks again for your help.

[Vitaliy S.]

In Veeam Backup Free you can select any folder or a network share to save your backups to, while the full version of Veeam B&R provides more options for backup targets.

As to the typical size of the backup file, then it cannot be predicted just based on the used and provisioned virtual disk numbers. The size of the backup file depends on how good your VM can be compressed and deduped. If it is a file server with lots of JPEGs, then the compression will be not very efficient.

[vipes27]

Great, thanks. One last question (hopefully). Should I install the Veeam on my local PC or on a VM?

Thanks again for your help. It's greatly appreciated.

[Vitaliy S.]

You can do that either way, just make sure you install backup proxy on the machine that meets minimum system requirements (see the Release Notes document included with your download).

[vipes27]

What is backup proxy? Is that something included during the install?

[veremin]

The backup proxy is such a component that resides between data source and target and which is used to process jobs and deliver backup traffic. In general, its task might include the following:

•Retrieving VM data from the production storage
•Compressing and sending data to the backup repository (in case of backup job) or another backup proxy (in case, of replication job)

You can assign the role of a backup proxy to any Windows server (physical or virtual) in your environment. Initially when VB&R is installed, the role of default proxy is assigned to the VB&R server itself.

For more information regarding backup proxy server please see the corresponding User Guide (p. 12).

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[vipes27]

OK, I've got it installed and I'm trying to add a server to the Backup Infrastructure but it's saying it can't connect to it. I tried the IP address and the full server name and I know the admin account I'm using is correct but it still doesn't work. Maybe it's a different port than 443 but how do I verify that?

[foggy]

You'd better contact technical support directly, they will be able to effectively assist you in what you're trying to perform via webex session. Thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

In addition to Alexander's advice, I would suggest using vSphere Client from the same machine to verify the connection to your vCenter Server.

[vipes27]

What's the best way to contact them since I'm using a trial version?

[veremin]

According to our policy, customers with an evaluation licence are eligible for support.

You can open a ticket and attach all of necessary logs by visiting http://cp.veeam.com.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.