Cloned Veeam backup servers

[adamspiteri]

We are backing up 4 hosts using a single Veeam backup server running on our Vcenter server. Backups over the network are very slow and take about 24 hours to complete. It seems that we can speed up the process by enabling multiple VM backup servers on each of the hosts to run simultaneously. To speed up deployment and keep disk cost down, I would like to create a master server with Veeam installed and then create linked clones of the master to run the backups. I don't see a way to change the database that Veeam is pointing to, is there a way to configure it after installation? I expect that having multiple servers writing to the same database is a bad thing.
Is there a better way to increase throughput? I only get 6-10 MB/s typically over the network. I believe that if I have a NFS or VMFS location to put the backups it would be possible to use the virtual appliance mode to speed things up, but that's not an option right now.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Adam,

I would like to create a master server with Veeam installed and then create linked clones of the master to run the backups.

I wouldn't recommend using linked-clones to have multiple backup servers, as I see no benefits in such deployment. All the VM data traffic goes through a backup server, so how that's going to work with linked-clones? Besides, you would need to manually reconfigure each backup server to point to the separate SQL Server. Furthermore, having the same backup server cloned would make this setup completely unmanageable by Enterprise Manager. Why don't you want to setup a separate backup server VM for each host?

I don't see a way to change the database that Veeam is pointing to, is there a way to configure it after installation? I expect that having multiple servers writing to the same database is a bad thing.

Yes, that's correct. Multiple backup servers cannot share the same database. If you need to change the default database, please follow the instructions described in this very topic: Move Veeam database only to another sql server

I believe that if I have a NFS or VMFS location to put the backups it would be possible to use the virtual appliance mode to speed things up, but that's not an option right now.

There is no need to have NFS/VMFS destination target for backup files to use Virtual Appliance mode. Backup/replication modes do no depend on the target storage, so you should definitely consider switching to VA mode to speed things up.

Thanks.

[bc07]

I would not recommend cloning Veeam backup servers because if you use the Enterprise manager all jobs from all cloned servers show up on all Veeam servers that have been cloned.