How to do bare-metal recovery on VEB?

[coopeman]

I’m having trouble designing my backup scheme (well, I seem to have gone down a dead-end) and am hoping somebody can help.

My network comprises a mixture of HP-UX Unix boxes and an Intel box running Hyper-V with 3 VMs on it – 2 x Windows server 2012 R2 and 1 x SLES. For this discussion, ignore the HP-UX boxes.

In preparation for sorting out the backup scheme, we purchased an HP StoreEasy 1440 with ~7.0 TB of usable disk and also an LTO-5 tape drive hanging off it.

So what I want to be able to do is…
a)Backup my VMs to the StoreEasy device, probably at different periods, so that I can do both file restores and bare-‘metal’ recovery of the VMs
b)Backup my Hyper-V host to the StoreEasy device so that I can do bare-metal recovery (and maybe file restores?) of the Hyper-V host
c)Backup the data on my StoreEasy to tape, so that I can do both file restores and bare-‘metal’ recovery of the StoreEasy device

Having spoken to Veeam at the outset, they suggested that I need VB&R for backing up the VMs and Veeam Endpoint Backup to backup the StoreEasy 1440.

Let me just say at this stage, all of my VMs are actually hosted on Citrix XenServer, not Hyper-V, although we are planning to migrate to Hyper-V imminently and so at this stage, I’m mainly concerned with backing up and recovering the StoreEasy Device.

The issue that I’ve had, is that since the StoreEasy (which has 4 volumes, B:, C:, S: & V:) holds all of the Veeam components (VB&R, VEB, Tape Server), I’ve had to create a separate volume on the StoreEasy for the (StoreEasy) Veeam Repository (V:) so that when it creates a backup of itself (B:, C: & S: -> V:) it doesn’t go ‘recursive’.

The issue that I have now is – how do I do a bare-metal recovery on the StoreEasy device? If I go to the latest backup job and try to do a volume level restore of all volumes, it (understandably) says…

System volumes cannot be restored to the original location on a live system. Do you want to restore them to a different disk?

Er, no...!

I did make a Recovery disk of the StoreEasy device early on, but that is now way out of date, and making a new recovery disk isn’t the answer since I’d then be replacing the backup process with one utilising recovery disks.

With the old Backup Exec that I used quite some time ago, the bare-metal recovery comprised creating bootable media that could then be used to restore the full system from Tape. I guess what I thought I could do here is the same, but that clearly doesn’t work.

Any ideas?

Also, issue 2 – how do achieve a bare metal recovery on my Hyper-V host (when it’s up and running)?

Many thanks,

Gary

[Dima P.]

Hello Gary,

The issue that I have now is – how do I do a bare-metal recovery on the StoreEasy device? If I go to the latest backup job and try to do a volume level restore of all volumes, it (understandably) says…

True. You can perform a volume level recovery the data volume only while running the live OS.

Recovery disk of the StoreEasy device early on, but that is now way out of date

I am not sure I understand who it could be ‘out of the date’. Did you upgrade Veeam Endpoint Backup? We do recommend recreating the recovery media due new features being added or bugs being fixed after major upgrades only.

the bare-metal recovery comprised creating bootable media that could then be used to restore the full system from Tape. I guess what I thought I could do here is the same, but that clearly doesn’t work.

Honestly, never heard that Bare Metal Recovery from tape worked without preinstalled operating system (which makes it a simple recovery instead of BMR). Could you please point to me any user documentation where it’s stated that bare metal restore from tape is possible? With VEB you can perform a Bare Metal Restore from any locally attached storage, shared folder or Veeam backup replication repository. If you store VEB backups on tape you have to restore such backup to the temporary repository first and then run a bare metal recovery.

Also, issue 2 – how do achieve a bare metal recovery on my Hyper-V host (when it’s up and running)?

When you perform a Bare Metal Restore original OS is not working and you are overwriting the existing disk, so there is no way to keep the Hyper V host running while you are performing bare metal recovery.

[coopeman]

Hi Dima,

Thanks for your reply. I think I've figured out a way forward that should help me achieve what I need...

I reckon the repository for my StoreEasy needs to be on a different machine and not on the StoreEasy device itself - this would take away the immediate reliance on trying to recover the backup from a tape device (which VEB doesn't support).

However, I think I would still like to further archive the StoreEasy backup (files) to tape (for offsite storage), but in this case, it would only be useful if I could read the Veaam backup file(s) from the tape without having a working Veeam installation - is this possible? If so, what are the steps that I would need to perform to read the Veeam backup files from tape and use them, in conjunction with my Recovery Disk to restore my StoreEasy device?

In terms of the bare metal recovery on my Hyper-V host, sorry, I think I misled you when I said "...when it’s up and running" - at the moment we have a Citrix hypervisor, not a Hyper-V hyperviser. What I meant to say was...
How do achieve a bare metal recovery on my Hyper-V host (when we have migrated to the Hyper-V hypervisor).

Many thanks,

Gary