Best OS for running Veeam 4 ?

[shale]

I am new to the product, so I was wondering if there was any particular Windows OS that the application runs best /
most trouble free on ?

I am going to be doing LAN free backup with vSphere API + CBT against ESXi 4 servers.

I had been testing it on WinXP Pro X-64.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions and opinions.

SH

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Scott,

It doens't make such a big difference what to choose, but I would recommend you running Veeam Backup server on Windows Server platform for sure. Judging by the feedback, Windows 2003 is the most commonly used platform, but don't hesitate to use Veeam backup server on Windows 2008 R2 either.
If you're going to use SAN mode, you'd better install your Veeam backup server on a Windows server with powerful CPU to get good performance rates.

Thank you!

[rfn]

[merged into similar discussion]

Hi,

Last week I moved our VB&R server from a virtual to a physical server. It's an older PowerEdge 2900 with two dual core processors and it's connected to our iSCSI network with one of the built-in Gigabit ports. Performance has improved when compared to the 4 vCPU VM running on more powerfull hardware.

To save licenses then the server was also built to be a backup domain controller and is located in our secondary server room where the replicas and the backup lives. The OS was Windows Server 2008 R2.

The first challenge was that SQL Server isn't supported on a Domain Controller, but it's doable and I got it to work. The next problem was that the two network cards was both getting registered in DNS and it was tricky to avoid because the machine was a domain controller. It's apparently not best practice with a multihomed domain controller. I haven't been able to get it to work properly and I'm considering rebuilding the server.

I'm considering reinstalling the server as a regular server and using Hyper-V to run a second instance on the same server where I could install the backup domain controller. This will cost me two Windows Server licenses which is not good, but if it can't be avoided so be it. I don't have a spare Windows 2008 R2 license but only a Windows Server 2008 license.

Now for the real question in this post : Will the performance of VB&R be the same on Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2?

The last option I have is to use the Windows Server 2003 OEM (R2 I guess) that came with the machine and use another spare machine as a physical backup domain controller. If I opt for the Windows Server 2003 32 bit then I won't be able to use the 10 GB RAM in the server, but will it matter for VB&R?

[Vitaliy S.]

Now for the real question in this post : Will the performance of VB&R be the same on Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2?

Yes it should be the same, as it doesn't actually depend on what server OS version you choose.

The last option I have is to use the Windows Server 2003 OEM (R2 I guess) that came with the machine and use another spare machine as a physical backup domain controller. If I opt for the Windows Server 2003 32 bit then I won't be able to use the 10 GB RAM in the server, but will it matter for VB&R?

It's CPU that matters not the physical memory amount. File compression operations consume most of CPU resources on the backup server.

[fgw]

just one additional question:

is there any advantage of running VB&R on a x64 OS?

as memory is no issue, i guess there may be no advantage on x64 at all?

ps. can confirm the cpu requirements during compression. have 4 concurrent jobs doing optimal compression and our 8 core server runs at 100% an all cores during backups ...

[Vitaliy S.]

is there any advantage of running VB&R on a x64 OS?

No advantage, see sticky FAQ topic (System Requirements section)

[larry]

One thing I notice with using surebackups my Veeam server will use all 4 gig of ram if I start too many VMs. Have a few VMs running in the lab and every new one started in the lab, memory use goes up. I ordered more ram today and will be testing with 8 gig ram , 2008R2. It seems that the 64bit OS will be the better choice. I was trying to DR test 8 VMs at a time but would get not responding errors from the Veeam server, memory usage was 100 percent, CPU only at 50 percent. Testing any 3 at a time worked but I need a set of 5 vms for one test.

I should be able to test this at the end of the week and will post back.

[Gostev]

my Veeam server will use all 4 gig of ram if I start too many VMs

What exactly do you mean by this? What process is using the memory?
It is by Windows OS design to assign all unused physical memory to the system cache.

[larry]

CTRL-ALT-DEL tasks. CPU Usage XX Physical Memory 100%

2 AD servers 67%
2 AD and 1 VM 74%
2 AD and 2 VM 83%
2 AD and 3 VM 94%
2 AD and 4 VMs 100% program is not responding

The numbers are not always the same ( some VMs use more than others ) but you can watch it grow. When the job ends all memory is returned.

My server has 4 gig of ram, I am upping it to 8 gig soon.

[Gostev]

You should be looking at specific processes memory consumption, not physical memory usage (does not mean a thing by itself). Reading through my response above, Windows OS will always attempt to put all available physical memory into the use (no sense NOT to do this). Thus unused physical memory will go into the system cache quickly when there is intensive disk I/O (which is the case here). As you are adding I/O threads by adding extra VMs, you will see more physical memory gone into the system cache.

Try copying a bunch of big files on your desktop/laptop, and you will immediately see available physical memory going down, and cached going up.

On the other hand, if some process on your system consumes too much memory, so much that OS starts swapping (and of course system cache size will be sitting close to zero should this happen), this would be an indication that adding more physical memory to the system is required.

Also, "program not responding" typically comes from CPU overload, not memory issues (unless there is some awful swap going).