Newbie question

[BobMurray]

Hi , I am new to Veeam backup and replication. I have studied the material and watched the videos however I was wondering if I could explain what I am doing and how I plan to do this just so one of the veterans can offer some input, I would appreciate this.

I have 2 x ESXi Standard Hosts. No vcentre. I have 7 Virtual machines. I have a DR site. I want to backup locally and also replicate to the DR site so I plan on the following.

Deploy a Synlogy NAS into my iSCSI fabric in my Main site. Have Veeam Backup and Replication on a physical host and connect this into the iSCSI using an iSCSI initiator. The physical Server will be the Backup and Proxy.

So far is this ok? can I have the backup and proxy on the same device?

I will then put a Synlogy NAS in my DR Site and put Veeam Backup and Replication on a Physical server in the DR site that also runs the proxy and backup server for Veeam. This means that my VM backups are replicated to my DR site so I can restore from my Synlogy device to my DR ESXi host. I can also restore from my main site if needed.

Is this accurate ? Can anyone make any better suggestions, the environment is far from complex. Just to note that the DR ESXi server has DAS, the Main site uses an iSCSI SAN.

[dellock6]

Hi Bob,
Not sure what you mean by "backup" role, but console, proxy and repository roles can be installed in the same VM, no problem.
Two proxies at both sides of a wan are for replica, not for backup jobs. For backup jobs you need only one proxy, and a repository at the other side.

But, since you have another ESXi server at DR site, I must suppose you want to replicate VM there, so I can suggest you a simpler solution:
- physical veeam server has you thought, doing backup jobs towards the Synology NAS. You can also use that NAS in smb2 mode directly, without mounting it as an iscsi device (so you can read the backup files even with another windows machine, via network)
- register the ESXi at DR site into the Veeam server at production site
- install console and proxy role in a windows VM deployed at DR site. virtual proxy is better than a physical one since it can use hotadd mode during writes into the datastore, physical proxy can only replicate in network mode
- create a replica job, not by using automatic proxy selection but configuring veeam server at production site as source, and virtual proxy at DR site as destination

You can restart VM at DR site directly via vClient without Veeam console, if you need to restore files at DR site, you import and register first the backup files from the NAS into the DR Veeam server, and than you start recovering.

Luca.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Bob,

So far is this ok? can I have the backup and proxy on the same device?

Yes, you can. Your setup looks good to me, but if you want to replicate backup files to offsite location there is no need to install additional backup server. You can add that physical box as a remote repository to your the backup server located on the main site and then target backup jobs to this repository.

This means that my VM backups are replicated to my DR site so I can restore from my Synlogy device to my DR ESXi host. I can also restore from my main site if needed.

If I were you I would also consider replicating mission critical VMs to the DR site as Luca has suggested above.

Thanks!

[BobMurray]

Thanks guys, this helps.

Is there a way to throttle bandwidth within the application during production hours i.e. reduce how much of my bandwidth replication uses during the day , but open it up at night.

[veremin]

Is there a way to throttle bandwidth within the application during production hours i.e. reduce how much of my bandwidth replication uses during the day , but open it up at night.

Yep, you can you can set up throttling rules to limit bandwidth. However, be aware that such rules are implemented between two agents, that’s to say, in case of replication you’ll have to proxy servers being deployed at each sites (Production, DR).

For more information regarding it kindly see corresponding User Guide (p.19, p.110).

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[BobMurray]

Very valuable info, thanks to everyone for your help today. Its appreciated.