Failover Cluster

[rstoner]

Hi,

I have created two Protection groups, one configured as individual computers (Group A) and one that is Active Directory enumeration (Group B). I added the failover cluster nodes individually into Group A, whilst I added the failover cluster computer account from AD into Group B.

Then I set two jobs, one as server backup (Job 1) VBR managed the other as Failover backup (Job 2), I added Group A to Job 1 and Group B to Job 2 and launched a backup of each, one after the other. However, both backups are identical,there is nothing extra from the failover backup that isn't in the standalone backup. Which prompted me to ask the question "What is the difference between backing up individual nodes within a cluster and the cluster itself?"

The cluster currently has a file service role. However, we are planning to use Veeam agent within VMs that have RDMs and are running an MS SQL cluster. We don't need to backup the MS SQL as there is a SQL Job that does this and dumps the backup to a drive, we only need to backup that drive. So, is there any benefit by setting up Failover Cluster backup as opposed to individual nodes?

Thanks!

[Dima P.]

Hello Roderick,

Jobs with server type do not process cluster disks and cannot track failover. Due to this reason we cannot grantee the application constancy while you are protecting your SQL cluster in a regular server job.

[rstoner]

Hi Dima,

From the backup I did with server type, I can still the cluster disks, so somehow it is processing them. What I am not sure about is how the following will work; if today the disks are on node A and we backed them up, then tomorrow they failover to Node B, and again backup. How will I know from which node I need to restore the data, as on day 1 the cluster drives were on Node A and on day 2 they're on node B.

[Dima P.]

From the backup I did with server type, I can still the cluster disks, so somehow it is processing them

Can you please provide a screenshot? Thank you.

[rstoner]

Here you go.. these servers are backed up using standalone server VBR managed. Drive Q: is the disk witness and drive E: is a drive given to the Clustered File Service.

https://ibb.co/iyQRsS
https://ibb.co/eaJPe7

[Dima P.]

Thanks for the screenshots. Yes in some cases volumes on the cluster disks might fit into backup. As I said before the problem is with the failover. With failover cluster job we do track the failover and continue the cluster disk backup incrementally. With regular server job (in case of standalone deployment and managed by Veeam B&R) backup will likely fail whenever failover is performed.

[rstoner]

Hi,

Thank you for the reply. Yes we did configure them using the cluster in the end, makes more sense. However, it was interesting that we stumbled on this during our tests and wanted to share + get to know why