Backup to Offsite Storage Using USB for Initial Transfer

[mwhalley]

We are looking to use Veeam Backup for a customer who has 40 virtual servers and 4TB of storage.

We want to be able to backup the Virtual machines over a WAN connection to a remote site, the setup we are looking at is:
Customer ESX Cluster < - - - - WAN Connection - - - - > Veeam Server at Remote Site > SAN Storage for backup files

Our WAN testing has found that the initial backup prior to the incremental backups can take an extremely long time. The daily growth isn’t large but with that much data we would like to use portable hard disks to get the first backup to the remote site. Our testing has shown that by using the Replication feature we get an option to use a portable disk for the first replication but using the Backup feature there is no similar option.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Mark,

Well... everything should be pretty straightforward:

1. Choose local path for initial backup job run.
2. Relocate whole backup set (all VBK, VIB and VRB files) to a new storage on the remote site.
3. Update Path to Folder option in the Edit Backup Job settings with the new storage path.

And that's it! You should be ready to run incremental passes.

[mwhalley]

Thanks for the response I still have a few queries regarding how you setup the backup job to point to local storage.

This is the setup we are using in our test environment:

Site A (Live Main Site)
• ESXi Host with VM’s to be backed up
• USB drive shared by local server
• Local IP: 192.168.50.x)
--
--
--WAN LINK (VPN)
--
--
Site B (Remote Backup Site)
• Veeam Backup Server with SAN attached disk repository
• Local IP: 172.18.254.x

We are attempting to backup the Virtual machines over the WAN link using the Veeam backup server on the remote site.

I have setup a new backup job, I have chosen the "path to folder" as a share of a server on the main site.

When I set the job to run it is extremely slows as if the data is being copied over the VPN to the Veeam server on the remote site and then back down the VPN to the main site share instead of backing up the data directly to the share.

Do you have any suggestions of how else this can be achieved without taking the Veeam server to the live site, running the backups locally and then bringing the server back to the remote backup site and continuing with the incremental backups.

Does the Veeam server have to be local to the live site for this setup to work correctly?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Vitaliy S.]

In any vStorage API job mode data flows through a backup server by default (VMware vStorage API architecture). I'm afraid the only way will be to install Veeam Backup Server locally, perform a backup job, then move backup files together with Veeam SQL configuration database to the remote site and continue backup jobs.

However, you may want to consider using another approach with rsync, in other words, you might have both local backup server and local storage, then use rsync to sync backup files.

For more info, please check our F.A.Q. topic: http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... 304#p20743

Hope it helps!

[st0623]

Mark, look at HyperIP, http://www.netex.com, to increase the performance of rsync or Veeam replication over the WAN. You can try it for 30 days to help with the migration, if you'd like. Sign up for an eval at the url above or email me at steve.thompson@netex.com.