backup vm's from our customer

[cgeorge]

I have a question about a backup setup we would like to do to backup our customer vm's
We would like to backup the customer vm's to our storage at our site.
Can we do this without a vpn between us and our customer or do you always have to have a vpn connection?

[foggy]

While VPN is generally not required, it is still a recommended and more secure approach, especially when talking about your client's backup traffic going over Internet.

[veremin]

Additionally, it’s advisable to have a proxy server deployed at the customer site. This way, backup data will cross the existing link in highly-compressed and deduplicated state and will be decompressed by repository agent.

Thanks.

[cgeorge]

How can I set this up without a vpn client?
This is our setup so far, i have a backup proxy at our site that is also used as proxy server for the backup repository.
Our backup respository is a cifs on our netapp.
How can I add the customer vcenter to our backup server if there is no vpn connection, I can never reach the vcenter or esxi that way?
Could you pleae tell me how to set this up?

[veremin]

You should have a connect to your customer site. So to say, the customer vCenter server where VMs to backup/replicate reside on should be reachable from backup server. Otherwise, it won't be possible to run any backup and replication activities.

Thanks.

[foggy]

Corresponding servers should have public IP addresses in this case.