Backup Media

[rstone]

Can I ask what people do when backing up using veeam. I backup with veeam to a 25TB NAS but this only gives me room for just over a months’ worth of backups. So I have to attach a USB drive to my NAS then copy over a backup once a month then backup the USB drive to tape. I would love to have a years’ worth of backups on disk but this is obviously too expensive. What do people recommend?

[Shestakov]

Hello Rob and welcome to the forum.

Could you provide your backup plan? How many VMs of what size do you backup? How often, using what method(reverse/forward incremental)?
Usually suitable planning helps achieve goals.
People also use deduplication/compression techniques and other types of repositories like tape media and cloud repositories. Thanks.

[rstone]

I have 50 VM's which total around 28TB of data. They all get backed up Monday to Friday (full on Friday) using reverse incremental. I have a retention policy of 30 days but would like to expand this!

[rstone]

Its actually 15TB we backup, appologies.

[Shestakov]

Thanks for the answer.
For better deduplication, backup multiple VMs with same OS and applications. For better savings you can also schedule full back less often.
To expand number of restore points GFS retention policy can be used.

[rstone]

Thank you. Regarding multiple VM's I ready have enabled parrellel VM and disk processing; is this what you mean? I will look at the GFS item.

Do you recommend any sort of cheap media for disk backups?

Thank you for your advice.

[rstone]

Regarding duplication I have changed it to 'WAN' as my NAS is in a different location and I'm running out of space.

[Shestakov]

Parallel processing helps to speed up backup process and it`s recommended to use it as well. But It doesn`t help to save repository space.
What I meant was adding VMs with similar OSes and applications running in the same job to leverage deduplication between them. Let VBR find same datablocks and save space on your repository.

Do you recommend any sort of cheap media for disk backups?

This discussion contains a lot of relevant information from our customers.
Thank you.

[veremin]

We don't recommend any particular model, but take a look at the ultimate backup infrastructure; should be helpful.

How your NAS is connected to production? In case of CIFS, be aware to specify proxying server closer to remote site.

Thanks.

[rstone]

Thanks for your advice, all understood and will be actioned except being new to Veeam I dont understand "Let VBR find same datablocks and save space on your repository", what is vbr and how would I do this?

[Shestakov]

VBR is Veeam Backup and Replication
You just need to pick several VMs for the same backup job when you instead of having lots of backup jobs with only one VM to backup.
Thanks.

[rstone]

Oh yes sorry. Yes I only have 2 backups jobs, 2008 servers and 2012 servers so I'm covered. Thanks for your help.

[Shestakov]

You are welcome, Rob.
Once you have a question, don`t hesitate asking.

[rstone]

Spoken to support and it does seem like its by design, it locks it when its running so all you can do is have smaller copies. This is not a lot of good for me as one of my servers is really big. O well you live and learn.

[Shestakov]

Are you applying to this (Copy and a restore) topic?