Backup to DR Design

[jdoster]

Hello Everyone,

We just purchased Veeam Backup & Replicate and I am looking for some input. I've searched the forums and have read some good post, but would like some more detailed feed back.

Our goal is to move Veeam Backups directly to the DR Site which is across town. We do not have any free space to create a local backup then move it to the DR. We have a 100 MB pipe which we just upgraded from our main site to the DR. The DR Site is new and we want to use Veeam for VM's and we are using Backup Exec for Physical Machines.

Here's what I'm working with.
Main Site
5 ESXI 4.1 Host
53 VM's
SAN Storage for VMs 20.35 TB
ISCSI Storage for 5 Exchange 2010 VM's

Remote Site
1 ESXi 4.1 HOST
3 VM
SAN Storage 13 TB

I've setup a VM at the DR with Veeam installed and have been creating jobs and backups have been running fine. They seem to run a little slow, but they end up finishing. I'd like to speed them up so they run in an overnight backup window. I am wondering if there is a better and more efficient way of setting this up. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

Jeremiah,

Could you please clarify whether you use replication or backup jobs? I assume that you're referring to replication jobs functionality. Also as far as I correctly see it from your setup description, you've already made a right choice by placing backup console on the remote site. The only thing that might affect the performance here is CBT, have you enabled it? What is the processing rate during incremental job pass?

Thanks.

[jdoster]

Vitaliy,

I have set the jobs as backups. I haven't made any changes to VMware so CBT is still off. I was confussed on this and did some reasearch and found how to turn this on, so I will hopefully get to that today. As it stands here are the processing rates:
First Test Backup Job has 13 vm's and they range from 3 MB/s to 314 MB/s. Each server is diffrent.
Exchange Backup is running at 114 MB/s.

Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, various processing rate for different VMs is expected: Very different backup speed on VM's

Also be aware that forward incremental mode should give you better incremental backup performance rates due to three times less I/O load.