[MERGED] VEEAM B&R: Local VM backups, Off-site replication

[stamatis.t]

Hi all,

VEEAM newbie here!

I inherited an infrastructure with two Hyper-V Server (WS 2012R2), where one is the active host for about 20 virtual servers, and the other one is the replica partner.

Local replication works smoothly, so I want to have one more replication point for some of the servers (around 5 of them) on a cloud provider.

We have already purchased a license for VEEAM B&R Essential (9.5) with WAN Accelerator.

What I want to deploy is:
1)Create backup job(s) for all the VMs to be stored in our local NAS (now I manually export them once every 2-3 moths)
2)A job to replicate 4-5 VMs on the cloud provider’s infrastructure, while keeping the existing local replication for all the VMs with the secondary Hyper-V server.

So here come my questions:
-Which is the best practice to back up the VMs from? The primary host or the replica partner?
-How VEEAM B&R handles all the differential disks that are being created during replication and the and restore points we have setup in replication properties for every VM?
-Regarding the off-site replication, from which Hyper-v will the VMs replicate to our cloud provider?

That’s all for now, looking forward for your valuable help.

Thank you in advance,
Stamatis

[PTide]

<...> the primary host or the replica partner?

Both will work, but you should keep in mind that backing up replicas is not quite conventional way. But, on the other hand, it does not put additional load on your production for the price of backup jobs taking longer to finish because of CBT data getting reset on replica every time a new snapshot is created, which causes Veeam to perform full scan of the virtual disk/checkpoint. I would go with backup from primary.

How VEEAM B&R handles all the differential disks that are being created during replication and the and restore points we have setup in replication properties for every VM?

I think I don't get the question, would you elaborate please?

Regarding the off-site replication, from which Hyper-v will the VMs replicate to our cloud provider?

The same as with backups, but there ois also another option - create replica from backups that are stored locally.

Thanks

[stamatis.t]

Hi,

Thank you for your quick reply

How VEEAM B&R handles all the differential disks that are being created during replication and the and restore points we have setup in replication properties for every VM?

I think I don't get the question, would you elaborate please?

Since recommended backup source is the production host, this question is not applicable.
I was thinking that if the backup source is the replica server, there are various files for the restore points configured per VM (.hru files) and I had the question if I need to keep that in mind when setting up the backup jobs.

Thanks again.
Regards, Stamatis