Physical Server Backup

[johntnavi]

I have a suggestion for doing the Physical to Virtual, I have tried it and it does work though I have not commited it to production as of yet. Using Backup Exec 2012 you schedule your Physical on a daily basis to VM then using Veeam replicate to DR Site.

[murdocmk]

Johntnavi,

Are those physical to VM backups always full backups, or do they address only what has changed? I'm not very familiar with the BE 2012 product. Many of the physical to VM backup products I've seen lack a decent approach to incremental/differential backups.

[rrnworks]

I don't believe BE 2012 will do a physical incremental / sync conversion to vm? I did find Acronis supports this. It seems to be the only product besides storagecraft head start restore and ca arcserve d2d virtual standby that seems to do this?

[johntnavi]

I think it does I am going to upgrade my Backup Exec Server this week to 2012 and will let you know. time permitting of course.

[m.novelli]

Would be really nice to me to backup the most important PC of my customers, I now it's contrary to Veeam philosophy but... could I ask to develop an agent to inject at run time on the PC clients and save them? I'm not talking about "bare metal backup/restore", just backup the raw content of the PC

Most of my customers now run Veeam Backup for their virtualized server, using the dedupe function would result in a manageable backup file of the most important computers (CEO, CFO, production machines, etc)

Marco

[dellock6]

Marco, I'm really doubtful this request would be ever satisfied by Veeam.
Right now we are looking at different solutions like for example VMware Mirage, more focused to desktop management and it can do way more tasks than barely backup files from computers. In this solution, we only need to backup the central Mirage server via Veeam since it's installed in a VM.

Luca.

[m.novelli]

My colleagues also are looking at Vmware Mirage and Dell Kace, but I'm in love with Veeam simpleness and robustness

Marco

[Gostev]

I'm in love with Veeam simpleness and robustness

With the main reason for this simpleness and robustness being that we are built specifically for the virtual world

[JoshRountree]

This is a kind of a "duh" moment, and it might have been discussed previously, but the direction I'm going towards now if I must have a physical server is to have Hyper-V run on the server and host only 1 guest OS, whatever I want to virtualize. It's not the best use of resources, but in my case for the price of virtualizing an Oracle workload this makes sense money-wise. I can then use Veeam to back up the VM, still stay compliant licensing wise, and get all the benefits of virtualizing (VM mobility, DR, etc).

I'll probably start pricing this out and make my case to management soon. Getting away from physical backups is the end goal for me, backup-exec didn't have a good story around WAN backups, and Veeam is sooo simple, love it!

[JeWe]

I just started with Veeam and I will try backing up the HyperV host with Windows Backup. Haven't done it yet but I don't know why this shouldn't work.

[baatch]

Hi all

Just wondering what everybody else is using in combination with Veeam to backup your Physical servers?

I'm sure there must be some people who still have to manage physical servers?

[dellock6]

Forgive me for kidding, but my best protection tool for physical servers is VMware converter

Beeing serious, I always try to virtualize as much as I can, removing or doind workaround for physical limits like faxes, hardware protection keys and the like. Really, there is no more excuse apart those legacy limits to stay on physical...

Luca.

[baatch]

Ok.. until we can get everything virtualized, what is the next best option in terms of protecting the physical servers?

[dellock6]

Now you make me think about it, really I'm not dealing with physical servers (apart ESXi...) from years!
From what I read, it depends what you need to do. If you simply need to save files from a physical server, Veeam v7 will have this feature too:

http://www.veeam.com/blog/it/the-countd ... on-v7.html

read in this article "Files to tape gives you an easy-to-use wizard that allows you to add specific files from Windows or Linux servers (virtual or physical) to tape.".

Luca.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Alexander, I would consider using built-in Windows backup to protect your physical servers.

[baatch]

Would using built-in Windows backup to a virtual disk on a VM and then use Veeam to back it up work?

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, this is what I was initially thinking about

[Doug.Butler]

I've seen several posts in various communities that talk about this strategy (use native Windows backup to back a physical machine up to a disk file, then use Veeam to back up that file).

It seems like more often than not, most people talk about putting that backup onto a VM disk, then backing that VM up (which seems to make sense). For me, I think it will be less confusing (no other benefit, really) to just use a "File to Tape" job to directly lay those Windows .bkf files onto tape.

I may be missing some important benefit here - what is the advantage of just backing up the VM that holds the .bkf files, vs. doing the "File to Tape" job and laying just those files on tape?

[Gostev]

There is no benefit. It is just that only one third for all Veeam users have tape, and can do File to Tape...

[flempitsky]

I keep hearing when customers ask for physical. What about those that are potential customers and they just do not want two products. There are many times my customers decided not to implement Veeam not because they did not like the Veeam features but because you did not do physical. I think Veeam market share could be much bigger if the considered Physical. So do not look at it from what existing customers are asking for but how many more customers could you have. I just had one this week.

Just what I have observed in my travels.

Frank

[habibalby]

Talking on sales side, I think Veeam should really think to attracted every customers with Their solution by introducing the support of physical servers.

For instance, why I have to pay for Veeam License and Symantec Support? Why Veeam not think in this direction? And let the customers instead of paying to Customers of Symantec, veeam will get this amount by introducing physical backup support.

[vmJoe]

Why in is anyone still even thinking about supporting physical servers anymore anyway? I don't anyone who is working on growing their physical environment? When I was a customer our policy was "virtual first", now I think everyone is "virtual only."

I think we are at a point that adding support for physical servers would be a step backwards, when the market is clearly moving away from physical servers.

[habibalby]

As you know that not every application/system can be virtualized.. Having this in your environment, will certainly must have to have two backup solution, one for VMs and one for the physical servers which cannot be virtualized. I'm one of those customers who still have few physical boxes and I use Symantec to back them up. In this case, in this case I have to have two supported solutions, Supported = Pay support fees to get it. On another hand, I have Veeam Support = Money.. Having combined two-in-one solutions from Veeam to support Physical servers, will allow us to save other SLA support fees and less headaches to maintain two Backup Solution.

Since my legacy servers are not yet supported on VMs or due to system design the system/application cannot be moved to Virtual, I have to stick to two vendors.

[Fiskepudding]

I agree with Joe.

In addition, I would hate it if Veeam lost it focus on Virtual environment.
And regarding growth and Veeam, I feel they don’t need to grow faster than they are.
It can be very unhealthy for a company to grow too fast. They need to keep their customer base happy.

If we can agree that physical machines is not the future, then imagine Veeam starting working on physical support now. 1-2 years down the line, they might have a product ready for release.. that might match competitors.
Well, then physical machine backups are probably a bigger niche then now.

If you need basic backup of a physical machine, there are soultions/workarounds, with windows backups -> VM -> Veeam. If you need more advanced features, I guess it is best to leave that to the dinosaurs that already do physical backups well

[Gostev]

for the physical servers which cannot be virtualized

Hi, can you please give an example of physical server that "cannot" be virtualized on the latest versions of VMware or Hyper-V and what is the specific reason why they cannot be virtualized.

For example, support for backup of physical Windows and Linux servers would not be too hard for us to add, however there is no sense to have those servers as physical these days, so why spend our cycles on this.

Now, you might be right about some legacy applications running on some strange unsupported OS. But consider the effort required to support those, and the relative value to the product this brings (how many of those servers are still out there). We can spend an effort to add support for that, and increase the value of our product by 1% (best case footprint for these strange apps, ever shrinking). Or, we can spend the same effort perfecting our virtual backup with some new innovative ground-breaking feature that will increase the value of our product in a few times (as we did before more than once). Put yourself in our shoes: what would YOU choose to do?

[habibalby]

Hello,
BMS systems, buildings management systems, PABX management systems...

Offcourse I would choose to spend time in perfecting the current veeam product.

Thanks

[Fiskepudding]

Regarding servers that cannot be virtualized, I often find that to only be on paper. In testing they usually work fine,but are "not supported in a virtual environment" by the vendor.

If you install a new system and the above is the case. You can try to tell them..., "Well, we have to find another that supports a virtual environment".
You would be surprised how fast they can add support for virtual environment, at least in your contract

It can off cause be a bit harder to get a vendor to add support for a product you are already using and have invested money and time into.
Witch I guess is your case Hussain.
But usually there are alternatives to change to.

Just think of the benefits of phaseing out those, often odd applications, to something new that can run supported in a virtual environment. Other than just for the sake of backups/Veeam.
If all that fails, there are a bunch of other backup solutions to choose from

[habibalby]

You are right Espen, for the coming two years I have major upgrade for those application, and one of them would the Jonson Control System, which I got clear
Statement from the Vendor its not supported on VM. .

But such as my case are plenty of people out there who are using veeam and looking at veeam as All-in-one solutions when it comes to Backup Admins or systems administrators...

[TieT]

I'm also looking for a all-in-one application when it comes to backup.

We use veeam to backup 100+ VM's and HP Backup Protector for our physical servers.

The physiscal servers consists of:
1 DC
2 Citrix Servers
1 VEEAM Backup to Disk server
1 Hyper-V Windows 2012 Server

It's not much but it would be great if VEEAM would create a plugin that would manage the VSS task.
So that VEEAM backup can pickup the backup and delete the shadow copy when done.

I know that this can be done manually, and there are workarounds.
But you have to admit it would be nice if it's integrated...

[Gostev]

I'm also looking for a all-in-one application when it comes to backup.

Everyone does, but the market reality is that today, typical enterprise uses, on average, 4.3 different backup solutions (2012 data). "Right tool for the job mentality" is strong and clearly justified, otherwise this approach would have died long ago. Apparently, nobody likes the idea of making a spaceship with Swiss Army knife alone. Understandably!

That said, file level backup is a very different story from server backup. It does not have the complexity of full server backup and restore (mostly restore), and I am not dismissing the need for this feature (although the use case is somewhat different in my mind). In fact, as explained earlier on this page, we already do file level backup with VSS, but currently to tape targets only.