Backup of large file server in remote office

[omfk]

Hi all,

for physical file server in one of our remote offices I've already covered this task. I've made a backup onto a local external HDD with VAW free and copied the data later onto my B&R server in our main office. All incremental backups are now running over the VPN line between remote and main office.

Now I have to repeat this talk with another remote office. Here we replace the physical server with a Hyper-V server. First step is the replace our 2 socket Essentail license with the new "per VM" license model (10 or 15VM in this model are cheaper then getting and maintaining an additional 2 socket license).

What are the recommended steps to deploy B&R in the remote office? The data to be transferred (initially) are in the range of 2TB.

BR
Frank

[PTide]

Hi,

Would you please clarify your request: do you want to have another VBR on the remote site to backup that Hyper-V? Why no to use your existing one?

Thanks

[omfk]

Hi,

I would love to keep only my B&R server at our main server. How to make the initial backup without having to transport all 2TB over a 20MBit/s line?

What would be the implications of having a second B&R server at the remote office? Would this be possible with Veeam Essentials? How would the split-up of the "per VM" licenses realized?

BR
Frank

[chjones]

There isn't really a solution to backing up all 2TB over your 20Mb WAN link. However, what you could do is create a local backup repository and backup to that.

Then, you could use a Backup Copy Job to send restore points back to your central site (all controlled from your central Veeam Server). You will need a proxy server (could be a VM) at your remote site and also a repository server (could place both roles on the same server). With the Backup Copy Job you could use Veeam WAN Accelerators to improve performance. Data blocks are compressed at the source WAN accelerator (at your remote site) and sent over the wire to a WAN accelerator at your central location, and then written to your central repository. The accelerators will cache the blocks they send (up to the cache size you provide for the accelerator and define in the Veeam console), so blocks already transferred are not re-sent.

The downside to all of this is if your WAN is down, no new backups will be created locally at your remote site as they are initiated by the scheduler on the Veeam Server.

You could also look at acting like a service provider where you run Veeam locally at your remote site and then treat your central location as a Cloud Provider that you are sending backups to, again, using the WAN accelerators. This is a bit more complex but is achievable.

However, with all of these, if you don't want to send that initial full backup over the wire then backing up locally and seeding the central site with that backup is still your best option.

[PTide]

Frank,

You can deploy a second, separate B&R at the remote office and use per-VM license on it. You can even point it to send backups to the head office repository owned by the first B&R. However, it's not a recommended approach and there are some limitations and things to keep in mind - please check this thread for details.

Regarding how to avoid sending 2TB over WAN - Chris is spot on here, initial seeding of a local backup would be the best option in your case. WAN accelerator requires Enterprise Plus license unless you use Cloud Connect target - in this case Enterprise license will suffice.

Thanks

[omfk]

There isn't really a solution to backing up all 2TB over your 20Mb WAN link. However, what you could do is create a local backup repository and backup to that.

Then, you could use a Backup Copy Job to send restore points back to your central site (all controlled from your central Veeam Server). You will need a proxy server (could be a VM) at your remote site and also a repository server (could place both roles on the same server). With the Backup Copy Job you could use Veeam WAN Accelerators to improve performance. Data blocks are compressed at the source WAN accelerator (at your remote site) and sent over the wire to a WAN accelerator at your central location, and then written to your central repository. The accelerators will cache the blocks they send (up to the cache size you provide for the accelerator and define in the Veeam console), so blocks already transferred are not re-sent.

The downside to all of this is if your WAN is down, no new backups will be created locally at your remote site as they are initiated by the scheduler on the Veeam Server.

You could also look at acting like a service provider where you run Veeam locally at your remote site and then treat your central location as a Cloud Provider that you are sending backups to, again, using the WAN accelerators. This is a bit more complex but is achievable.

However, with all of these, if you don't want to send that initial full backup over the wire then backing up locally and seeding the central site with that backup is still your best option.

I'm coming back to this old thread of mine, as there have been some changes in the setup and constraints.

I would like to make the backup of the file server in the remote office to a repository also at the remote office. For this approach I have the following questions:

1) The repository will be a NAS which I would like to access per iSCSi. Where does this have to be attached on? Hyper-V host remote, File server remore, B&R server in main office?

2) I assume I need a proxy server for this approach. Which machine can that be?

3) Can I then "copy" the vbk file on the NAS to an external drive, ship the drive to the main office and use this as a seed for the backup copy job remote office -> main office?

4) With this approach I assume that no backup will be done when the WAN link is down but I can live with that.

BR
Frank

[PTide]

1) The repository will be a NAS which I would like to access per iSCSi. Where does this have to be attached on? Hyper-V host remote, File server remore, B&R server in main office?

You should attach it to the Hyper-V...

2) I assume I need a proxy server for this approach. Which machine can that be?

...and let that Hyper-V act as a proxy and a repo at the same time, just mind the system requirements.

3) Can I then "copy" the vbk file on the NAS to an external drive, ship the drive to the main office and use this as a seed for the backup copy job remote office -> main office?

Yes, you can do that. Should you choose to stick with rotated drives you need to keep in mind some nuances of how they work with Backup Copy.

4) With this approach I assume that no backup will be done when the WAN link is down but I can live with that.

Correct. If VBR cannot reach Hyper-V host on the DR, then it won't be able to trigger a snapshot.

Thanks