Backup proxy backing up itself

[abma]

We are using a backup proxy for backups. The veeam server runs on a different machine and the backup-proxy runs on the on the same vmware machine where backups are made.

The backup job includes the proxy itself. The backup of the proxy takes really long and its size is incredible big. Used disk-space on it is about 17GB but all (incremental) backups are about 36GB, there is no other service running on this machine.

Any idea whats the problem here? I guess the Backup proxy creates some temporary files...

If so, is there a way to make the Veeam Backup Proxy these temp-files to a different disk (which can be excluded from the backup)?

[foggy]

There is a known limitation (covered in the release notes) regarding proxy server backing up itself: hotadd mode cannot be used (which makes these VMs to be backed up over network) and CBT is automatically disabled on them. You can use another proxy server to back this VM up.

[abma]

thanks, didn't find that:

from http://www.veeam.com/veeam_backup_6_1_r ... tes_rn.pdf "Known Issues, VMware"

Virtual backup proxy server cannot be used to backup, replicate or copy itself in virtual
appliance (hot add) mode. Jobs configured to do this will automatically failover to
Network processing mode.

I'll try it with a second backup-proxy.

[ardana]

Hi all

I have just installed VEEM B&R on one VM (Windows 2008 R2) and I wanted to backup this VM, but backup tooks really really long and ended with errors. Another VM I can backup easily. I am not sure about proxy using, but is there any way how could I increase performance of backup ? after 23 hours and nothing is backuped at all. There is about 400GB data and data are backuped to NAS. Everytime I run the backup, bottlneck is always: source. (There is 1vCPU with 4vCores, 8GB RAM)

I was considering installing backup proxy to another server and for using this backup, use this proxy, but I am not sure. We do not have a lot VMs and second one is mail server where I did not want to install anything else

thanks for help

[foggy]

Andrej, looks like you are trying to backup Veeam B&R using itself as a proxy, which puts some known limitations described in this topic above. You can try to use another proxy server to do that.

[ardana]

Thanks Foggy,

I will try to install backup proxy on our second VM, which is mail server, but I was not sure, if it will not load mail server very heavy....

[foggy]

Not very heavy in case of backing up just a single VM, though depends on the change rate on it and backup job settings (compression level, etc.).

[mxx]

Hi,

I have read through the whole thread, but I haven't encountered this question yet:
Because of Windows Licensing we'd like to run the backup proxies on the production vms that are being backed up.

I understand that, for backing itself up, a proxy cannot use hot-add mode. But it can use hot-add to backup another VM (whether this other VM is itself another proxy or not shouldn't matter?).

We only have 2 Windows VMs.

Could we install backup proxies on both of them and configure the backup jobs for those 2 VMs so that the proxy on VM1 backs up VM2 and the proxy on VM2 backs up VM1?

Hot-add mode would work in that scenario, wouldn't it?



Thank you very much!

Max

[foggy]

Yes, hotadd will work, however CBT will not.

[mxx]

Yes, hotadd will work, however CBT will not.

Thanks for the quick answer foggy!
This doesn't sound nice. Any recommendations for this scenario?

[foggy]

No particular recommendations, if you have to use these VMs as hotadd proxies. Their backups will take longer due to inability to use CBT (still only changes will be backed up, however Veeam B&R's proprietary algorithm will be used to calculate them, which requires reading of the entire VM image).

[mxx]

Hi,

shortly before testing Veeam finally
Could you please help me with one more question? I wasn't able to find a topic around this particular setup (which I understand wouldn't be ideal):

A backup proxy can back itself up, ok, but what if that backup proxy also had the backup repository role installed?
If the storage for hosting the backup data was an ntfs formatted iscsi volume mounted on that backup proxy, could the backup proxy back itself up to this iscsi volume?

Thank you very much!

Kind regards,

Max

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Max,

A backup proxy can back itself up, ok, but what if that backup proxy also had the backup repository role installed?

The same, any Veeam component can be backed up if it is installed in the VM.

If the storage for hosting the backup data was an ntfs formatted iscsi volume mounted on that backup proxy, could the backup proxy back itself up to this iscsi volume?

Yes, it should be possible, though I do not fully understand why do you want to backup your proxy server. Can you please clarify?

Thanks!

[Gostev]

Seems like pretty standard and recommended small deployment scenario to me, Vitaly. All-in-one server with backup target being iSCSI LUN.

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, I agree on this, just wanted to know why there is a need to backup a proxy server, since you can dump backup of the config file to the same iSCSI volume and then use it to restore the entire backup server.

[mxx]

Thank you very much for all your replies!

The primary reason for backing up the proxy server itself is to not waste this Windows Server license, but also run other services there (which are the ones that need to be backed up, not the proxy in particular ).
Unfortunately veeam's services only work on Windows (except the repository). And my customer only has a very limited amount of Windows Server licenses. Even though you can run it on Windows Client OS too, this has some limitations according to the release notes.
This was the reason why I looked at the competition's products first, but I really like yours much better + the great offer with 50% reduced price for small businesses is also very appealing

I have tried it yesterday and it worked great!
So far it has been amazing!
If it just didn't rely so heavily upon Windows...
Ideally, the server hosting a proxy shouldn't run much else if you want the backups to be as fast and efficient as possible, because then you can't take advantage of cbt on that server. And so you wouldn't just need Veeam but also additional Microsoft licenses.

Thanks for this amazing product and the great support here on the forums!

[Vitaliy S.]

Thank you for your kind words, but keep in mind that additional proxy is not required. Veeam backup console has a proxy role already pre-installed. Thanks!

[bbibber]

a newbie remark, but still...

Our company had veeam installed a week ago and the consultant created a backup proxy on the backup server itself and 2 additional backup proxies for 30 VM's (all virtual).

We thought this was kind of overkill as a proxy can deal with 200 VMs, and then we still can add more vCPU's But as it turns out, after reading this topic, we at least need a second backup proxy to backup the first in a decent way.

The consultant put all 3 Backup proxies in "Automatic selection mode" to let veeam decide for itself which proxy to use, this sounded like a good idea.

I don't think the presence of a backup proxy on a VM you want to backup will trigger veeam to use another proxy though. Veeam support today advised me explicitly to make sure a proxy isn't backed up by itself.
This makes me kind of confused. So "Automatic selection mode" is only beneficial if you don't put servers with a backup proxy in the job?

Sincerely
Guy

[Gostev]

Veeam support today advised me explicitly to make sure a proxy isn't backed up by itself.

Hi, Guy. This statement is incorrect, proxy can backup itself just fine. Thanks!

[foggy]

You can use a separate job with explicitly set proxy server if you want to be able to back up the first proxy using hotadd mode. However note that CBT still cannot be used for it (provided that the first proxy is used to backup other VMs using hotadd).

[bbibber]

Hi, Guy. This statement is incorrect, proxy can backup itself just fine. Thanks!

Thanks for your reaction

... but backup will go a lot slower if I understand this tread correctly?

Maybe I misunderstood what support was saying. Could you look into case #008913 ? Struggling a bit but I'm a quick learner
I made a special job just to backup both proxies and removed them from the original jobs and the problems seem to have disappeared.

[foggy]

This is not the correct case ID, so I cannot check it. However your understanding is correct: backing up proxy using itself as a proxy will just take longer (due to inability to use CBT).

[bbibber]

@foggy in the mail subject case #008913 is mentioned, in the support portal 00891304

[sbbots]

Has Veeam ever considered developing a Veeam proxy virtual appliance? Just curious.

[foggy]

Has Veeam ever considered developing a Veeam proxy virtual appliance? Just curious.

Yes and no.

[wushoo]

Hi, I have the same scenario and hoping you can provide recommendations.

Is it okay to add a VM that is being backed up by veeam
as a back up proxy? Infra is I have 2 sites that is being back up by VBR.
1st site is in another location with 2 host and 1 VM each 2nd site has 1
host with 2 VMs and Physical Server where VBR is installed and is also the
repository. Both sites are connected via lease line. on the 2nd site I want
the 2nd VM (File Server VM) to be the back up proxy also. This VM is being
backed up.