Backup job for each branch or all in two jobs?

[liviu.tutuianu]

Hello,

In one of the countries where we implement VEEAM, we have a situation like this:

1 Headoffice VBR (4 CPUs)
30 Branch VBRs
2 MB lease line

For DR reasons, we need to backup a certain disk drive from each branch VBR to Headoffice VBR. Each of these drives have 10 GB. So, the backup will be made over the WAN.

Now, here come the questions:
1. Although the disk drive is initially empty, when I ran a test backup from store to backup, it copied 10 GB. I know that the first backup should be a full backup, but I though that will contain only the data from that drive... Did I forgot to set something? After I added 2 new GB on the branch disk , at the next incremental backup, they transferred another 2 GB. So, after two days, I had 12 GB stored in HO, although the data from the branch is 2 GB.
2. Taking in consideration the number CPUs from HO VBR, what do you recommend in this case: to have separate backup jobs for each branch or to have 2-4 jobs that will contain an equal number of different branch drives?
3. Also, what do you recommend: incremental backup or reverse incremental backup in this case?

Thank you for your support,
Liviu

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Liviu,

1. Veeam backup job skips zero (unused) blocks, but if you ever had some files written on these disks and then deleted them, this doesn't make these blocks zero ones. Here is an existing discussion for further reading.
2. Since you will have a proxy server (data mover) on your remote sites, then it doesn't matter how many vCPUs you have on the main backup server. All CPU intensive tasks will be performed by your backup proxies.
3. For the sake of simplicity in regards to retention policy configuration, I would suggest using reversed incremental backup mode. Also make sure you deploy a Windows/Linux repository in the HQ to store your backup files.

Thank you!