Cisco UCS Mini and Veeam Backups

[robm82]

Hi all,

I am after some advice on how to best setup the following environment that I am setting up internally. We are purchasing a Cisco UCS mini along with some Hitachi Fibre Channel Storage to replace some older HP equipment at our main site. We currently use DPM for backing up our Hyper-V VM's, but as you can tell I am wanting to move to Veeam . So the plan is to move all Hyper-V VM's onto the UCS and the Hitachi storage platform, and then rebuild the old HP equipment and I will move that to our second office for DR purposes.

What I would like to know what is the best method or best practice for this scenario? Should I purchase an external Server with some Direct Attached Storage for the Veeam Server and then purchase another Blade for the Veeam Proxy Server so that I can speed up the backups? Also I want all backups to be on disk only at the moment, so I was thinking of having some smaller storage at the Head Office for Veeam so that I can keep all the latest backups local on site where I may need to urgently restore an entire VM etc, and then I was thinking of having a large capacity storage device at our second office so that I can replicate some backups offsite for long term retention.

What I want to know is does this sound like a good implementation/configuration or should I be considering anything/something else?

Many thanks in advance for any help that anyone can provide.

[PTide]

Should I purchase an external Server with some Direct Attached Storage for the Veeam Server and then purchase another Blade for the Veeam Proxy Server so that I can speed up the backups?

That's a good idea to take the load off your Hyper-V host. However, I'd recommend you to use Direct Attached Storage with proxy server and install VB&R server on a virtual machine - there is no need in a physical dedicated server. It is the proxy, who performs actual data processing and moving so there's no need for the DAS to be attached to VBR.

then I was thinking of having a large capacity storage device at our second office so that I can replicate some backups offsite for long term retention.

That's a well known practice to take backup copies offsite for a long-term retention. Veeam has a special feature for that called Backup Copy Job and GFS retention model. If you choose to use some kind of a share on the remote site you will need a gateway server located as close to that share as possible - that will speed up the copying process.

The overall configuration looks good and solid and I don't see any problems.

Thank you.

[robm82]

Great stuff thanks for the info it is much appreciated. Is it not better to provide the backup storage to VB&R as we will then get better performing backups or does it not make that much difference with the proxy doing all the processing? I thought in this scenario the VB&R Server would process the backups through the proxy, and then the VB&R Server receives the data and writes it direct to the backup storage? Or it is the other way round in that the proxy server does all the processing and writes to the backup storage?

[PTide]

Is it not better to provide the backup storage to VB&R as we will then get better performing backups or does it not make that much difference with the proxy doing all the processing?

If you provide the backup storage to VB&R while having a separate proxy then your dataflow is goint to be like VB&R --> Proxy --> VB&R (repo). If you let your proxy to hold the role of a repo then you flow will be VB&R --> Proxy. All you need to do is to assign proxy and repo roles to the same machine.

[robm82]

I did not honestly know that - that is really useful information. Thank you PTide for taking the time in providing this information - this is very useful

[PTide]

Also please note, that off-host proxy requires a Hyper-V role installed.

[robm82]

That I did know - but thank you for reminding me