Backup at Cluster level or Resource Group level?

[MikePettit]

Hello,

I'm just starting my Veeam backup job configs and I'm wondering what has worked best for people who have experience. I've done some testing. I can setup the backup job at the Cluster level and then tell it which resource groups to backup, setup disk exclustions, etc. This backup creates one backup file for the entire cluster. OR I can setup one backup job per resource group (usually have about 5-8 resource groups in a cluster). This creates several backup files per cluster.

At first glance, it looks like creating the backup job at the Cluster level makes a lot of sense. It makes the job a little more complex, but keeps the amount of jobs and backup files down. But, does the one file dedupe less than the many files because of the way the data is structured (I use DataDomain so I will turn veeam dedupe off or use the dedup-friendly setting)? Are there any other things that I'm not considering with this method?

I'm very curious as to what level people setup their jobs in Veeam. Cluster, resource group, something else?

Thank you for your time and expertise!

[Shestakov]

Hello Michael,
You are correct, backing up groups of VMs is considered as the best practice as it gives better deduplication results and makes job management easy. However, too many VMs can make a job run for too long. And it doesn`t matter if you backup clusters, resource pools, folders etc. VMs number and size is more important.
To sum it up, VM grouping is recommended, but real numbers depend on your capabilities. Thanks!

[MikePettit]

Thank you, Shestakov!

[Shestakov]

You are welcome, Michael!
Once you have a question, don`t hesitate asking!