Backup over WAN. Proxy vs Repository?

[andreas]

Hi,

I have a thought regarding offsite backup over the WAN. Our local backups, I have a good handle on, but we now want to add offsite backup over the WAN.
On our offsite location, there is a ReadyNAS where I want to store my backups. The question now is how to best arrange this?

1. Share the storage on the NAS using CIFS and then add a repositorie on our local Veeam server and then duplicate all backup jobs to this repositorie? (Proxy?)

2. Setup a Windows server and connect to the NAS via iSCSI and use this server as the target? (Proxy or Repositorie?)

3. Is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks in advance,

Best Regards,
Andreas

[foggy]

Andreas, the best way is to set up a Windows server in the remote site, add it as a repository to Veeam B&R, and present the NAS via iSCSI to it. In this case the target-side agent will run on this "proxying" server and only compressed data will be transferred over WAN. Thanks!

[andreas]

Andreas, the best way is to set up a Windows server in the remote site, add it as a repository to Veeam B&R, and present the NAS via iSCSI to it. In this case the target-side agent will run on this "proxying" server and only compressed data will be transferred over WAN. Thanks!

Ok, thanks! Do i need to install any Veeam component on my remote Windows server that is to be used as the "proxying" machine or is this configured automaticly when i add this as a repository?

/Andreas

[foggy]

It is configured automatically.

[jpeake]

Is there an advantage to using a Windows server at the remote site vs. a Linux server?

[Gostev]

No advantages or disadvantages. Same code, just compiled for a different platform.

[jpeake]

I think I saw in another post somewhere that by adding the server agent at a remote site, vs mapping to remote storage directly via CIFS saves about 3X traffic over the WAN. Is that accurate?

[Gostev]

Yes, this is so for reversed incremental backup mode.

[andreas]

Yes, this is so for reversed incremental backup mode.

Very interesting. Can you generally say that reversed incremental is the preffered way to go when you want to run your backup jobs to a offsite repository over the WAN?

/Andreas

[foggy]

No. This is not like "traffic usage for reversed incremental is 3x less than for forward incremental" but "traffic usage for reversed incremental in case of agent-enabled target storage is 3x less than for reversed incremental backup directly to CIFS share". In the case where our agent is installed on the target storage (or the proxying server on the target side), VBK update and transformation processes are performed locally on target storage instead of sending corresponding data over WAN.

[andreas]

Sorry for spamming this thread but exactly how much gain is there in using a agent-enabled target vs lets say just a regular filcopy with rsync or something like that. The backupfiles are already deduplicated and compressed at the main site and are just to be copied over the WAN link to an offsite location?

/Andreas

[dellock6]

Uhm, wait, you already have local backups at your primary site, right? And you want to replicate those backup files in the remote readynas?

In this case, since Veeam can only save data in one repository per job, is to go on saving backups locally, and then replicate backup files to the remote storage via replication software like rsync. Search in these forums, there are many examples about how to use rsync.

[jpeake]

Which way is "better"? I am a new Veeam'er, still in the trial period. Looking at Veeam Enterprise to replace BackUp Exec.

I am backing up 30 or so VM's locally to a SAN volume. So far so good. I want offsite also (but not the full blown Veeam replication route). I have setup secondary jobs that point at an agent based NAS in a remote office. When the primary jobs finish, it fires the offsite job using post-job command line.

Is that the preferred way of doing this, versus just setting up something like rsync and pushing the files as a process external to Veeam?

[dellock6]

The SAN volume is the same holding production VMs? This is not a good practice, you loose the san you also loose the backups. Better have two nas, one local to save backups, and another remote to ship there the copies of the backup files.
In your design, you hit the production storage twice: it's not a bad thing per se, but you can reduce your backup window and the load on the storage by running only the local job, and then use rsync to copy the backup files remotely.

Luca.

[jpeake]

The production SAN is holding both VM's and backup volume. This is temporary, just during my testing as I evaluate permanent solutions. We still use Backup Exec to tape. Looking at either a Drobo (800i or 1200i) or Dell DR4000 in main site. And am using a couple of low end QNAP NAS boxes in the remote office (QNAP 419PII).

I will try rsync.

[Unison]

Hi andreas,
I think the trick might be to not try and get veeam to do everything on its own or at once. I think what your wanting to do is similar to what we have put in place here.
Each time you give veeam something to do with your servers - i.e. back them up locally, back them up over the WAN, replicate them over the wan - it will shorten your available backup window times, meaning you get fewer backups through the day.
Originally i was going to get Veeam to do our local backups, then WAN backups and then replication of our VMs.....but i realised that getting veeam to do the WAN backups is a bit of a waste of the backup system and veeam resources. Thats when i made the decision to get something else involved in the backup process (not that i dont think veeam couldn't do it but it is unnecessary to 'hold up' veeam by giving it this unnecessary role) - but because something else can do that 'work' - why make veeam do another backup when it has just done the backups? I use a product called Allway Sync to 'copy' the backups that veeam stores locally to our other geographically separated office over our 40MB WAN connection.
This way, veeam can do more backups more often and it can do our replication - another product handles the copying of files to our other WAN separated site.

So our process is like this...

- Veeam takes backups of all servers many times a day and stores backups locally (backups only run on even hours)
- Veeam does replication of all our servers many times a day to a spare ESXi host and totally separate storage from production (replication only runs on odd hours)
- Allway Sync copies/synchronises the veeam local store backups with a windows box in the remote site several times a day - at times that minimises impact to users
- I then use VB scripts to move files around the local stores in both sites so i can retain images for long periods

You might not want to do replication, but use veeam to do your backups locally as many times a day as you can.....then use something else to do the moving/copying of those backup files that veeam has just made. Veeams file copy module is very basic (hopefully they will develop this area of veeam in future - it hasnt had much attention ) so just use something else for that part of your backup system.

[JoshRountree]

What about setting up a Windows Box in the remote location and install another Veeam server there and let it handle replication. Is that possible, or does it need to be handled by a Veeam server local to the storage?

[foggy]

Josh, this is possible and many of our customers do pull replication, which provides them for faster failover using Veeam B&R in case of disaster. Just remember that you still need the proxy server in the source location for fast data retrieval.

[JoshRountree]

Josh, this is possible and many of our customers do pull replication, which provides them for faster failover using Veeam B&R in case of disaster. Just remember that you still need the proxy server in the source location for fast data retrieval.

Can I use my local Veeam B&R server as the local proxy server? It does my local backups, but as long as it's not doing a backup, I would think it would be okay resource wise? Or, can I backup with the local Veeam B&R server and use it as a proxy for pull replication at the same time? I would think it would be slow.

[foggy]

Depending on you backup/replication load. Note that if backup proxy server is shared between different Veeam backup servers, the number of concurrent tasks for it is counted within each backup server independently.

[JoshRountree]

If I have a Veeam B&R server in a remote location and use it to "pull" backups with a proxy at the location where the datastore is, will I get WAN dedupe and compression, or do I have to use a "push" backup to get that?

[tsightler]

V6 and above have no concept of "push" or "pull", those concepts are largely a legacy of V5 and earlier versions, when the Veeam server itself did all of the data movement so it's position mattered. With V6 and newer and the distributed architecture, all communications are proxy->repository (for backup to Windows drives or Linux mounts) or proxy->proxy (for backup to SMB/CIFS over WAN, or for VM replication). As long as you have a proxy near the datastore side, and a repository or proxy on the target side, you will get compression/dedupe.

[JoshRountree]

That's what I thought, I think I was reading a lot of v5 posts and got confused.