Backup Proxy on the Remote Side for free

[basic39]

Hello,
on one of our branches we have following infrastructure:

In the first building we have a ESXi with some VMs. They are backuped by Veeam Backup&Replication to a NAS. The Backup-Server is at the same time a Veeam Backup Proxy.

In the second building we have a secondary ESXi and a secondary NAS-device. Our goal is to replicate the VMs from the first building to the second building(secondary ESXi) and then backup the replicas from the secondary ESXi to the secondary NAS. This would work, if we had a Veeam Proxy in the second building, but we haven't. And we won't buy an additional license for these purposes.

Does this problem have a solution? Is there a possibility to have a Veeam Proxy without additional licenses?

Thank you in advance.

[HannesK]

Hello,
even a free Veeam proxy would not really solve your problem because you probably did not license the secondary ESXi for Veeam... that means you would also need new Veeam licenses. Also not free, but keep in mind that you can also use Windows 10 as proxy.

What about using the backup copy job?

Best regards,
Hannes

[basic39]

Thank you for your answer, HannesK.

Veeam have already enough sockel-licenses for the second ESXi, so it is not the problem. Yes, I know about Windows 10, but it also requires paid Windows licenses.
Backup Copy works bad too. Without a proxy on the destination-side, replication and backup copy works bad.

[veremin]

You don't need any additional VB&R licenses to assign proxy server role to any Windows-based machine in the secondary site. Thanks!

[basic39]

Yes, I know.

But we won't buy an additional Windows licenses for these purposes.

[veremin]

You can assign a proxy server role to any already existing Windows-based machine. There is no other way to have a proxy server in target site. Thanks!

[zadrian]

You cannot use Win10 as a VM unless it is a VDI solution (thats another licensing issue altogether).

Sadly, you will need another Windows Server (VM) to install Veeam server as a proxy (no Veeam license is required). Do note the storage required, especially if you may layer decide to run Veeam WAN accelerator on it as well. But as it might sound silly, I included the $500 for Windows server licensing as part of the backup budget (its approx $1K for 1x Server 2019 std licenses that runs 2 VMs).

You can also start a post on the features to have Veeam create a "Veeam" Virtual appliance....like vCenter now have a VCSA....that reduces the need for Windows Server licenses for vCenter.

[HannesK]

You can also start a post on the features to have Veeam create a "Veeam" Virtual appliance [...]

yes, but that does not help him today. As already mentioned in that thread, we are working on a solution to avoid licensing costs for proxies.

Anyway: in general it is not a good idea to backup from replica for the following reasons:

No change block tracking (CBT) which makes it slow.
no file-indexing possible
No SQL Point in Time recovery
More complex restore mechanisms
Additional license usage (already mentioned

Best regards,
Hannes